Love Letter to My Readers

I rarely respond to comments. Somehow it always seems a little arrogant, like I’m assuming that my readers are checking back in on my blog every five minutes. Although I LOVE it when other bloggers respond to my comments, and I myself often check in on the blogs I read (very nearly) every five minutes. So that is something I probably need to start doing. Responding to comments on my blog, I mean. Not checking blogs more often.

But until I start responding to comments, I want to send out a general thank you: I love all of you wonderful people that comment on my blog. You make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, because you say such nice things and because this space here is the only place where just about everyone I love gets together.

My friend Jenny recently wrote a lovely post about moving around and how she wants to gather everyone she has ever known into one place. Now some people are not like this. My husband, for instance, probably thinks that this is a possible version of hell, everyone he has ever known gathered in one place, yammering at him and distracting him. For me, though, this is what my heart yearns for: a place where everyone I love and have ever loved—and I’m using the term love quite freely here—is gathered together, getting acquainted, sharing food and drinking coffee until about three in the afternoon and wine after.

There have been a few times in my life where I have experienced just a hint of this. When we were visiting our families in Alaska and our good friends Troy and So Yung came up to visit, for instance. All of my family and all of Craig’s family and these dear friends all were gathered together for a few days. Or when my friend Jenny moved into the same condo building as my friend Marji in Chicago, and we began to have afternoon kid free-for-alls in their backyard, often including other close friends of mine like Nancy or Molly. Really, to me, these experiences have been a taste of perfection.

And this space here, too, is a glimpse of how I think things should be. Everyone I want in my life meeting in one place. So yes, here’s what I’m saying, cheesy though it may be: my blog is, to me, a little bit of heaven on earth. Until the day that I can convince everyone that I hold near and dear to move onto a big farm somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, this is as good as it gets.