Rachel Simon's Blog

When I told friends that my wonderful publisher, Grand Central, was going to send me on a pre-sale tour to meet booksellers at fancy dinner events around the country, each at a fabulous restaurant, and I would be staying at some of the nicest hotels in every city I visited, and so many of the cities were spectacular in and of themselves, and that the publisher would be sending high-level people across the country to dine with me, everyone pretty much jumped for joy. Friends who knew, as I did, that publishers rarely send authors on book tours these days, much less tours before the book is even released (The Story of Beautiful Girl has a publication date of May 4, 2011), actually screamed with delight. The rest shook their heads in awe and said words to the effect of, “How glamorous!”

And I won’t lie. It has indeed been glamorous – and thrilling and fun and fascinating and delicious.

But there are other things in life besides three-course meals and swank hotels with glorious views and booksellers who get starry-eyed when discussing everything from “Cutting For Stone” to “The Odyssey” and publicists, editors, and sales reps who can tell incredible, behind-the-scenes stories about some of the most famous books and authors in the world.

There is, for instance, laundry.

Let’s face it. If you live out of suitcases for two weeks, eventually you need to tend to the basics of life.

I’d certainly packed enough to get me through that stretch of time. In fact, to accommodate everything, I hadn’t brought my usual travel pillow, and had instead been just fine sleeping on folded towels. (I find hotel pillows way too big and high for my relatively little head.) But halfway through my trip – as I was wrapping up City #3, San Francisco, and packing to head to the five cities I’d be visiting in the Midwest – I thought, Gee, fitness centers and free copies of the New York Times are great, but a washing machine would be greater.

What do politicians do during campaigns? Movie stars during press junkets? Rock musicians during thirty-city tours? Do their handlers cart the bundles to the local laundromats? Do they taxi over to the Spin-’N-Dry themselves?

Or do they do what I’m lucky enough to be able to do: contact friends I was planning to see anyway, and ask if I might please spend some time in their laundry room?

And luck was with me. In my next stop, Ann Arbor, live not one but two friends from college. One would be picking me up from the airport Sunday evening, and the other seeing me Monday in the late morning. I contacted both in advance, and asked, a little shyly, if I could do my wash. Both immediately said yes, so when I bid goodbye to the West Coast and flew into my beloved Detroit Airport, I knew the second half of the trip would begin with my clothing – and hence me – renewed.

Carol scooped me into a hug at baggage claim, and instantly as was as if we were at one of our college reunions, which is the only place where we’ve seen each other since we graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1981. Our hug, and the drive to her house in Ann Arbor, ushered in memories of all of those five-year markers, which she and I and a core group of maybe sixty other women have attended without fail since our final, tearful tradition of the Step Sing, when the seniors mournfully leave their coveted spot on the steps of Taylor Hall, and walk away from the other students, into the unknown future. Our non-stop chatting for the next several hours – about the books we’re reading, the events of the world, and the courses of our careers – also reminded us of the many fortuitous talks we’d had, in her dorm room and mine, during our undergraduate years.

Carol, like me, happens to be a someone who can fall easily into conversation, and I wondered if the smallness of our college (our class was something like 330 people total) helped both of us cultivate this ability. It’s impossible to know, though I think the intimacy of the school is directly correlated to closeness I feel toward everyone in my class, even those I barely knew. We can see each other and immediately feel transported back to a bouncy seat on the Blue Bus or a corner of Thomas Great Hall during Coffee Hour or a slow-moving line at the Haverford Dining Center, where anyone might start talking about anything, and you knew the conversation would be lively and interesting.

For the next few hours, my laundry churned and dried while Carol, her wonderful fiance Randy, and I talked around their kitchen table. Then Carol and I went out to dinner at a great vegetarian restaurant, Seva, where I was tempted by just about everything on the menu – yet the food was far less important than the conversation. Later, Carol brought me to my hotel, the Campus Inn, and we snapped a photo of ourselves in the mirror.

The next morning I saw my other friend. Since my laundry was done, she and I went into town for brunch. But since she’s traveled a huge amountherself, some of it to places as far as India and Japan, she knew that there were other details travelers need to think about. “Do you need to stock up on some food?” Well, yes, I did, come to think of it. I always travel with apples (current favorite: Fugi), but my reserves were getting low. So we went across town to a great produce place and I got just what I needed.

I returned to my room with just enough time to work out and take a shower before my next appointment, a meeting with folks from the local disability community. But no sooner had I walked into my room and reached for my headband and shorts than my cell phone rang.

“Rachel, it’s Deb.”

“Hi!” I said effusively. I knew my editor, Deb, was on her way from New York to Ann Arbor to join me for the evening’s dinner, and I was looking forward to seeing her. “Where are you?”

“In my room here at the Campus Inn. But I can’t stay.”

“You can’t?”

“Do you know about the storm they’re forecasting? They’re calling it a Snow-pocalypse. We might have to change some of your plans.”

So forget the workout. I showered right away and ran down to her room. There she texted the home office, working out Plan B, then Plan C, then Plan D. Could she make it back to New York tonight, before the snow hit the East Coast? Yes. Could I get to Lansing tomorrow for my next dinner? Yes. Could I then go onto Chicago for the dinner after that? No. Milwaukee, after that? No. The folks planning the tour, being smart, cautious, wise, and efficient, decided to cancel those two cities. I would either go back to Ann Arbor after the Lansing dinner or stay in Lansing. Either way, I’d have two nights in a hotel that I wasn’t expecting.

I realize some people get frustrated, annoyed, or upset when they have sudden changes in travel plans. But I’ve always viewed travel as a series of adventures, and just because my pre-sale tour was suddenly turning into an adventure I hadn’t been expecting didn’t mean it couldn’t be wonderful in its own way. You never know who you’ll meet or what you’ll do. Indeed, part of the inspiration for The Story of Beautiful Girl came when I had a few extra minutes before a ride from a talk to the airport, and I happened to see a particular book on a vendor’s table that I then bought, devoured, cried over, and remembered. And look what grew out of that.

As my husband Hal once told me a Buddhist teacher told him, You never know where enlightenment can come from.

Besides, it seemed the whole Ann Arbor leg of the trip was turning into one big reminder that I’m more than a writer racing around the country doing fancy, fabulous things. I’m also a person who needs (fresh) food, (clean) clothing, and shelter from blizzards. And here, in Ann Arbor, friends and my caring publisher were going to make sure I got all three.

Knowing everything would be taken care of, I was able to go to my next appointment without a worry. So I hurried down to the lobby of the hotel, where I met with three prominent people in the Michigan disability community. Angela Martin is a sibling and the Community Specialist at the Developmental Disabilities Institute at Wayne State University in Detroit; Robin Sefton is the leading Michigan self-advocate and Vice President of the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council; and Pat Carver, also a sibling, is a self-determination planning advocate and community connections consultant.

We sat on comfy sofas and drank hot tea, and I learned that Michigan was one of the most progressive states in the country – in both policy and practice. As of last September, it had closed all its institutions. Not only is it the largest state to have done so, but it succeeded in this goal without shipping people off to other states. Angela, Robin, and Pat spoke with pride about their state, and the important role that Robin, in particular, had played. I felt lucky to be in their company.

Then I was off to dinner with Deb.

My previous dinners were formal affairs in private rooms, beginning with drinks at 6:30 PM. This time was more casual. Deb and I still went to a restaurant, the Pacific Rim, at 5:30 PM, and our table was in the regular dining area, tucked away in a corner. There were no pre-printed menus or name tags, no special server. Deb even brought her bags, since she was going back to the airport directly from the meal.

I’ve loved the, well, glamor of the big, luxurious dinners, but I also loved this less formal approach. It made it easy to walk up to four major people from the corporate headquarters of Borders, say hello, and feel right at home as soon as I sat down. I’d wondered for weeks if they’d be wearing suits and looking serious. Borders is also going through a challenging time as a company, and I’d thought it possible that the people I met would be preoccupied with that. But they were bubbling with happiness – about my book, about several other titles they’d loved, about their friendships with each other. It was a wonderful, fun, upbeat group, and we fell into conversation as easily as I had with Carol, my other friend, and the disability advocates. I learned that there had been a recent infusion of financing that has alleviated the most pressing of Borders’ problems, but that was not the focus of our dinner. It was, instead, my book, other books, my life, their lives, and how much all of us love reading and stories and literature.

When’s the last time you sat at a dinner table and heard, every five minutes, “You haven’t read this? You absolutely must.” And you pulled out a napkin and began a list, and by the time you finished dessert, it was long.

That was what this dinner was like. Like being back at Bryn Mawr, where friends and strangers eagerly and happily talked about the written word. Where literature mattered more than almost anything you could think of. Where food was far less important than conversation.

The dinner flew by. By the time my cab arrived to shuttle me back to the Campus Inn, I felt I’d made a tableful of new friends. And as I chatted with my cab driver – it was his first day on the job, he told me, after losing a position for an auto maker two years before, and he was loving it so far – I wondered what glamor really is. We tend to see it as red carpets and fine wines and opulent jewelry and lavish hotel rooms. And it is all that. But it’s also a friend who opens her washing machine door and another who helps you buy apples. And strangers who tell you how hard and successfully they’ve fought for people who need advocates. And booksellers who would practically sell their souls to keep selling books. And cab drivers who welcome passengers. And publishers who really, truly care.

Or perhaps I have it wrong. Maybe that’s not glamor at all. Maybe it’s just what we all need, and deserve, to feel loved and wanted as an ordinary human being. And regardless of how high the snow might fall over the next few days and how much my plans might still change, I will cherish these two lovely days in Ann Arbor for giving so much that was so human to me.

Tags: book tour, pre-sale tour, The Story of Beautiful Girl, writing life

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Rachel's adventures on the road, Uncategorized, Writing and publishing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.