Rachel Simon's Blog

My friends are always saying, “Gee, I thought authors wrote their book, the publisher put it out, and that was it. I never guessed it would go on after that.” It sure does, at least for me, since I do professional speaking about the material in my books. For me, the “after that” phase goes on for years.

As readers of this blog know, my publisher sent me on a book tour this winter when The Story of Beautiful Girl came out in paperback. Between Feb. 10 and March 3, I spoke in bookstores in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Connecticut, Delaware, and Virginia. After a few days to catch my breath, my speaking engagements for The Story of Beautiful Girl began for the spring and I was back on the road. At that point, I traveled to Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Toronto, California, and Minnesota. I returned from the last talk for the season on May 25.

Or, to be more concise, between early February and late May, I did 40 events in 21 states – plus Canada.

On the book tour, the crowds were modest, between 15 and 40 people. At the speaking engagements, they ranged from 100 to 500 to 1,200. Sometimes I did multiple events in one city on the same or consecutive days. Sometimes I spoke in one state, and a few days or weeks later, returned and spoke there again. Often I flew from city to city to city before a brief break at home. I’d unpack, see my husband, wash my clothes, do my hospice volunteer work, pack again, and head back out. I missed Hal and my quiet life, but since I love everything about public speaking, I also enjoyed every minute.

Of course, I always try to work in extra visits with my many far-flung friends – some of whom drive great distances to meet me. I also always try to make new friends. And I usually take long walks so I can learn about my surroundings, burn off calories, and stay energetic. So whenever I travel, my days are packed.

I know, I know, I’m describing a very demanding schedule. The friends who’ve been following on Facebook and Twitter have been admonishing me to slow down, take a break. And I’m happy to say that I’ve heard you. This summer I’m taking some down time at long last.

And, to make the most of the opportunity to write, read, sit, think, walk, dream, and see my husband, I’ll be going offline for the summer after I post this blog. People who want to reach me for professional reasons (speaking engagements, interviews, publicity, etc.) should contact Marc Goldman of Damon Brooks Associates, at marc@damonbrooks.com, or 805-604-9017. People who want to reach me for personal reasons, or because they’ve liked my books, are welcome to send me a letter (yes! a real letter! printouts of emails will also be welcome) at: Rachel Simon, P.O. Box 3673, Wilmington, DE 19807.

But before I sign off, I want to share some of the highlights of this spring. Not every highlight; I wasn’t able to take photos at every program, and I would overwhelm you if I showed you all of the pictures I have. (Though I wish I could! Sorry not to have you here, Tom and Rita O’Neill, Betsy Kachmar, the Arc of Stark County, Loui Lord Nelson, Carol and Derrick Dufresne, Laura and Brent Jackson, Kate O’Neill, Gary Blumenthal, Susan Ashworth, Betsy Small, Harriet Redman, Gretchen Raab, Anne Strainchamps, Teri Derry, Mark Davis, Joseph MacBeth, John Raffaele, Ann Hardiman, Ann Genaro, Ellen Morosoff Pemrick, Genie Cohen, Lee Sherman, Charles LaRussa, Yona Lunsky, Karen Calzonetti, Richard Oldfield, Lori Jasper, Sue Hayes, Nancy Peterson – and so many others.)

So look at these photos as just a small glimpse of my many adventures this spring. May they give you a sense of how exciting and fulfilling the last few months were for me – and why I now need the solitude and silence of this summer.

Enjoy these warm months, and I’ll see you back here in the fall!

Events and Sights – In No Particular Order

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Friends, Old and New

It’s the weekend after Thanksgiving. While most people had large family gatherings with turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie, I took my sister Beth to see Puss In Boots, followed by a trip to a diner for our holiday dinner. It was a nice, peaceful, private way to say thanks for a thrilling, non-stop, very public year.

In fact, the year has been so non-stop that I haven’t posted a new blog since August. It’s been so long that readers of this blog have gotten in touch, saying, “Where have you been?”

In the interest of answering that question, I’m posting a photo journey through the last four months. It won’t cover everything, but will touch on many of the important episodes and people, and will give a sense of all I have to be grateful for. (And when I mention giving talks, I’m mostly referring to talks related to my novel The Story of Beautiful Girl, though occasionally I also spoke about my memoir, Riding The Bus With My Sister.)

Yes, I did.

For the first three books of my career – the books that preceded my first bestseller, Riding The Bus With My Sister – I wore fun, whimsical costumes to do author readings in bookstores. In fact, during these early years of my career, from my first book, Little Nightmares, Little Dreams (1990), through my second book, The Magic Touch (1994), to my third book, The Writer’s Survival Guide (1997), some people came to my readings just to see my latest costumes. I often worked with props and actors as well, creating what I called “literary performance art.”

I retired the costumes in 2002, when Riding The Bus With My Sister came out. By coincidence, I began doing professional speaking then instead. I’ve continued dressing like a regular old author ever since, and have also continued to do professional speaking – most recently for my first New York Times bestseller, The Story of Beautiful Girl. I wrote about all of this in my last blog post, which you can read here.

But I have many fond memories of my days in costume. So when my friend Cecily asked me to guest blog for her at Uppercasewoman.com today, I decided to share one of the most prominent.

It’s about the paper dress. It’s also about how I met Cecily, way back in 1994, and we became friends.

Please go to Cecily’s blog to read about it. You can also see photos of some of my other costumes, as well as how I look in the paper dress now. (Well, last week.) Here’s the link.

And if you’d like to learn more about my first books – all of which were well received and critically acclaimed, but none of which led to national recognition or stayed in print – please go to the Books page on my website.

Suddenly, a mere seventy-five minutes after take-off from Philadelphia, I step into an airport where the sign saying “Exit” is coupled with a sign saying “Sortie,” wall-sized advertisements are for companies I’ve never heard of, and my most valuable possession is my passport.

I make my way through Customs, trying to adjust my vocabulary. On my last trip to Canada, in 2004, I blundered into a faux pas almost immediately: on my cab ride from the airport, I used the word “provincial” to mean people of limited outlook – only to have my driver casually remind me that “province” refers to Canadian jurisdictions, like American states. So now, as I leave baggage claim and begin my search for someone holding a sign with my name, I tell myself: Remember, it’s not restroom; it’s washroom. Dollar bills are dollars; dollar coins, loonies. My greeter, a young woman, waves to me, then leads me outside to wait for the car that will be conveying me to my hotel. As we’re waiting for the car to pull up, I ask what the temperature is, adding that it’s a summery 80 degrees at home. “Oh,” I catch myself, “that’s right. You don’t use Fahrenheit. You use Centigrade.” She gives me a blank look. “You mean Celsius?” The blush bursts across my face, and doesn’t recede until my car is miles – uh, kilometers – away.

I am here in Canada for yet one more leg of the pre-sale tour for my upcoming novel, The Story of Beautiful Girl, which will be published in both the States and Canada on May 4. Faithful followers of this blog know that a few months ago, in January and February, my publisher, Grand Central (an imprint of the Hachette Book Group), sent me around the United States on a nine-city pre-sale tour. During those thrilling two-and-a-half weeks, I attended a series of fancy dinners hosted by Grand Central for the purpose of introducing influential booksellers to my book. Over sumptuous meals, in elegant private rooms, I talked about the writing of the book and got to know the booksellers, as well as the sales reps and publishing executives who were running the show. I’d loved every minute of the pre-sale tour, which I blogged about here, city by city, and which I’d said good-bye to only reluctantly.

Then, after I got back from Denver – which I thought was the final stop of my pre-sale tour – my publicist sent me an email. Would I be willing to do another pre-sale tour – in Canada?

Canada! The last time I’d been to Canada, in 2004, was to visit the set of the movie made from my memoir, Riding The Bus With My Sister. I’d flown into Toronto, the largest city in the country, though had stayed there only long enough for a meal and a quick drive around to see the sites. The movie, which was originally scheduled to be shot in Toronto, had been relocated to nearby Hamilton, after the specially-outfitted bus on which many scenes would be shot – which had a huge scaffolding on which lights were hung, and was operated by a driver sitting on the roof – didn’t fit on the streets of Toronto.

I have many fond memories of those days on the set, where I didn’t only hang out with the stars, Rosie O’Donnell and Andie MacDowell, the director, Anjelica Huston, and the producer, Larry Sanitsky, but with the crew members who handled hair, make-up, clothing, sound, and transportation – all of whom were Canadian. I’d had a lively time talking with each, and learned as much about their specialty as I did about ways Canada resembles, and differs from, America. When fans of the movie talk with me about visiting the set, they usually focus on the celebrity angle, neglecting to ask about what it was like to be in the land of the Maple Leaf Flag.

So would I do another pre-sale tour in Canada?

Yes! Though this time, I’d try to be a little less clumsy about it.

The wheels started turning. Between February and this past Monday, April 11, Melanie, the Publicity Manager with Hachette Book Group Canada, worked hard to pull together a set of meetings with key people in the bookselling world. I later learned that the book industry in Canada is heavily centered in Toronto and the surrounding region, so she focused on that city only. I also learned that, as in America, there are both independent bookstores, like Ben McNally Books, and big retailers, the largest of which is Indigo Books and Music. Melanie arranged meetings with both, as well as with Canadian Manda Group, a rep group which handles sales to independent bookstores and libraries. I also later learned that my pre-sale tour in Canada was the first to be undertaken by Hachette Book Group Canada. So Melanie, along with Jean (who works in the New York office), decided to do something a bit different from the one-fancy-dinner-per-city approach that I experienced in America. They would pack all my meetings into a single day – and all would happen before dinner.

Still smarting from my verbal goof, staring out the window at huge numbers of high-rise condos and a scattering of low brick buildings, I listen to my driver as he drives me into the city from the airport. He’s from Sudan, he says. Toronto is very immigrant friendly, and as a result is one of the most international cities in the world, with a wider range of restaurants than you can find anywhere. He says unemployment is low – “Only about eight percent,” he adds, which is of course considered high in America. He says there is a major election going on now, which I was vaguely aware of. It turns out that he’s only vaguely aware of the fact that a few days earlier, the federal government in the States almost shut down. This will not be the only time I wonder if the average Canadian pays as little attention to the U.S. as the average American does to Canada.

It’s sunny, windy, and a balmy twenty-one degrees Celsius when I get out in front of the Hotel Le Germain. Like many of the places where I stayed during the pre-sale tour, it’s referred to as a boutique hotel: small, artsy, intimate, atmospheric, and elegant.

This hotel has a chic and modern ambiance. The women at the check-in desk are lean and stylish, and speak with gorgeous French accents. The front desk and corridors are decorated with green apples. And in my room, two sides of the shower are glass, with one side facing into the washroom, the other overlooking the rest of the room. A modest bather who steps under the rainfall showerhead could draw wooden blinds shut to shield herself from the eyes of her roommate, but otherwise she will be fully on display to anyone present.

In the midst of all this exotic ambiance, I know that I am really back on the tour. And that knowledge makes me realize something. Since the American pre-sale tour ended, I’ve been so caught up in the outreach I’ve been doing to set up events, create videos, contact people in the disability community to talk about the book, etc., that I’ve forgotten how it feels to be so well-treated by a publisher. In fact, for the last few weeks, things have been so quiet, I’ve started to think that maybe I hadn’t written a book at all, or if I had it wasn’t about to come out, or if were did no one would be paying attention. After all, most books come out to no attention, as I’ve learned firsthand over the course of my twenty-three years as an author. But here in the Hotel Le Germain, I’m reminded about the huge effort that Grand Central is putting into my book, and that they are doing everything humanly possible to get it attention. I spin away from the see-through shower and gaze out the window to the great city of Toronto, feeling a rush of gratitude and excitement.

Then I fly downstairs.

As on the American pre-sale tour, I’ve taken the opportunity to set up visits with friends who I’d otherwise never see. In this case, the friend is Donna, who I haven’t seen since we were both sixteen and living in New Jersey. At that time, my siblings and I were living with our mother, who was in a state of complete meltdown. I’ve written about this period in Riding The Bus With My Sister and The House On Teacher’s Lane, so I’ll just summarize here. My mother, hoping to find some salvation from a life of single-parenthood, loneliness, and depression, had spent the last several years dating what I can kindly call ill-advised romantic choices. My friend Donna saw all of this.

She also saw my sister Beth. She saw my brother Max and my sister Laura. And she saw me: in my room, where we played Monty Python records and drew pictures on scratchboards (Donna was a real artist; I an amateur); in school, where we suffered through the most inane chemistry class in human history; and on the road between her house and mine, where we walked and talked at all hours of the day.

Then my mother made a very ill-advised decision, and impulsively married an ex-con she’d just met in a bar. He didn’t want us around, so, on a single day in 1976, my father took custody of Max, Laura, and me. Beth stayed with my mother, and a terrible story ensued that I won’t go into here. But on that one day, just before I drove off with my father, I called Donna and told her what was happening. I don’t remember this, but Donna does. “I might never see you again,” I apparently told her.

And I didn’t for thirty-five years, until we found each other on Facebook last summer.

Now, here she is, standing in the lobby of the Hotel Le Germain with her husband, Gregg. After several years doing missionary work in Spain, they recently moved to Toronto to do missionary work for the Liebenzell Mission. They have devoted their lives to serving others.

We take each other in our arms and hold each other.

For the next many hours we talk about their lives, my life, and the time we spent together, so long ago. I realize that Donna was more inside my life than anyone at that time, and as a result she remembers so many of the sad details that I’ve written about. It is strange and hard to be transported back to such an unhappy period in my life, but it is beautiful to share it with the main person who understands. We go to the famous Tim Horton’s, a coffee-and-donut chain much beloved by Canadians. We go to an Indian restaurant. We sit again well into the night in my lobby.

I do not think this until the next day, when I tell some booksellers about seeing Donna, and it hits me: the story of my own life – of losing people you love and missing them terribly and wanting to be back hugging them once again – resonates completely with The Story of Beautiful Girl. It’s funny how you can spend years writing a book and months talking about a book, yet miss one of the most crucial antecedents for how the book came to be.

I go to sleep with a feeling of release. For so long I’d carried a sorrow about being forced to part from Donna. Now we’ve found each other.

The next day is my big day. So of course I wake up as early as I can so I can begin it with some exercise.

I skip the hotel gym. Lake Ontario, I’m told, is relatively nearby, if I walk briskly. So I head out into the streets of Toronto, camera in hand. It’s the morning rush hour, and the sidewalks are full of pedestrians. I don’t know how characteristic my observations are, but it seems as if just about everyone is wearing black and just about no one is overweight. Despite the throngs, the streets are almost silent, with no cell phone conversations underway. I pass old buildings and new, streets packed with cars and streets without a soul in sight. I pass through a tunnel that runs alongside a train station, taking note of the Bicycle Station where, it seems, commuters can pick up a bike after arriving in the city. I pass the CN Tower – the most recognizable landmark in Toronto, though one that’s probably visited as rarely by the locals as the Liberty Bell is in Philadelphia. I cross underneath a raised road, which is, I guess, the famed Gardiner Expressway.

Then I get to the lake. The walkway that runs along its side is full of boats, but, to my surprise, no people, aside from one dog walker and one jogger. I would imagine that this area is crowded later in the day, but at eight in the morning, it’s a solitary delight.

I let myself slow my pace for one precious minute. And I look out onto the glittering water and up into the wide, blue sky. Life might be full of loss, I think, still feeling the final hug from Donna. But it can also be full of found.

Then I hurry back to my hotel. Where – yes, I get daring – I shower with the blinds wide open.

Down in the lobby at nine forty-five, I wait for one more friend. This time it’s a relatively new friend, Richard, a bus driver from Oshawa who works for the Durham Region Transit system. Richard learned about Riding The Bus With My Sister from a fellow lover of all things related to buses. He read the book and found me online, and for the last several years we’ve corresponded. When I told him I was going to be in Toronto, I also told him I didn’t think I’d have any time for a visit. But Richard, who spends his holidays riding bicycles with his wife on long trips to places like Mexico, Australia, and England, is not one to be daunted. He also feels it’s important to meet distant friends, having grown close to other correspondents who he never had the chance to meet. And, as luck would have it, he attends a bus trade show in Toronto once a year – and that one day coincided with today! So even though we’d have only about half an hour to visit, we said, We must do this.

And there he is! Wearing his bus driver uniform, because he already drove a shift earlier in the morning. And wearing the biggest smile at finally meeting the person he’d been sending stories and pictures to for several years. We hug, too, and then walk around outside, looking for a Tim Horton’s to sit in. But neither of us knows the city well enough and time is tight, so we return to the hotel, where he gives me transit maps and souvenirs like a squishy bus – and a newsletter from the Hamilton bus system about how much help they gave the filmmakers when my movie was filmed in their city.

Before we have a chance to settle into anything resembling a conversation, Melanie is walking up to us. It’s thrilling to meet her – and all the more so because she has, in her hand, the first finished copy of my book that I’ve seen. Yet my delight at taking the copy into my hand is complicated by my disappointment in having to say goodbye to Richard so soon after we said hello. But, great bus driver that he is, he knows that life is a long chain of entrances and sorties, greetings and farewells, losses and founds. He asks if he can snap a picture of Melanie, me, and this first copy of the book. Of all the souvenirs he gives me, this might be the most valuable – other than the photo that Melanie then took of him and me.

Richard and I say good-bye.

I turn back to Melanie, and there, standing beside her, is her colleague Jean, who’d arrived from New York the day before. We shake hands. We gaze with amazement at the book – which, I now see, has a pearly sheen to the white background, thus removing all sense of starkness from the black-and-white color scheme, and giving the book a gentle sparkle. We talk quickly about the day ahead. Then Melanie, Jean, and I jump into a cab.

Our first appointment is at Canadian Manda Group. We’re greeted by Allen, who’ll be conducting an interview with me in their office. We go to a conference room where the walls are lined with books. I sit on one side of a long table, he sits across from me. Turning on a Flip camera, he tells me that he’d like to ask me questions that other interviewers haven’t asked me yet, and elaborates just enough for me to understand that Allen has put major time into preparing for this interview. Then he starts asking his questions, and as we do indeed cover topics that few others have asked me, and he responds to my answers in a way that manages to be literary, compassionate, and insightful all at once, the interview starts to transform into something deeply moving. Halfway through, I understand why. He has just asked a question about my sister Beth, and when I ask him to try to narrow it down so I can give a more specific response, he reveals that he too is the sibling of someone with an intellectual disability. Suddenly our professional rapport, which was already so strong, becomes personal. A sense of empathy overtakes both of us, I can’t keep myself from tearing up, and the remainder of our conversation – because that’s what it turns into – feels almost transcendent. It is as if the pearly light that illuminates the cover of the book were shining down upon Allen and me.

I am in a daze after we finish the interview. I have no idea if the camera captured the experience as I – and, I think, he – felt it. I’ll find out when I see the final edited version, which will go out to independent bookstores and libraries across Canada. But for the moment, I can’t think about that. I am shaking with the sense of having been enveloped by something far more powerful than I expected when I walked in here, and that I know will stay with me throughout the rest of the day.

Then Melanie, Jean and I zoom off in a cab.

Our next appointment is lunch with key staff from Indigo Books and Music. This takes place at Brassaii, an upscale restaurant located in an older building off a cobblestone courtyard.

The booksellers as already at our table when we arrive. Also at the table are Terri and Martha, who are Melanie and Jean’s colleagues from Hachette Book Group Canada. Unlike the dinners at my American pre-sale tour, which sometimes ran as long as four hours, we have only about an hour and a half for this meal. So after the booksellers introduce themselves, and explain some details about Indigo (their 250 stores include the chains Chapters and Coles, with some stores combining books with tie-in merchandising), we move right into my talking about The Story of Beautiful Girl.

Because my interview at Manda was so emotional and I don’t want to start crying so soon after stopping, I try to maintain a professional demeanor. But within minutes, Terri is wiping tears from her eyes, and soon Martha is, too, and then I start losing it myself. I don’t know if the booksellers are weeping along with us, because all I can see is Martha digging into her pocket for a pack of tissues and passing them around. I also get so caught up in the feelings that I’m not able to eat my meal. And after I finish, as I’m encouraging others to talk, Martha mentions that, one day when she was describing my book to a client, the woman was so overtaken by her feelings that she ran sobbing from the room. And that was before she’d ever read a word – or, certainly, seen the book cover, whose sparkle conveys, I hope, that the story resolves in something, well, beautiful.

All too soon, we have to wrap up. I sign everyone’s book and thank them for coming. Then, as they leave, we hug each other goodbye.

Still savoring the pleasure of speaking with these booksellers, we jump into another cab. Melanie and Jean are eager to show me the flagship Indigo store, and I’m eager to see. Not only have I just met some of the main people who work for the company, but I once worked for Barnes & Noble, one of the major chains in the States. So we pick up our suitcases back at the hotel and taxi across town, passing sites like the University that Melanie and Jean point to but that the cab turns too quickly for me to see.

We get to Indigo. Melanie hands me a copy of the book. I stand in front of the store, and she snaps this picture.

We walk inside. At first it look like a variation on American chain stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, with front displays, multiple levels, and a cafe. But there are many more display tables in the front than I see in American stores, and among those tables is a special display called “Heather’s Picks.” Heather Reisman, the CEO, personally selects books she loves, and then highlights them on this table. I’m told that Heather lives nearby, and sometimes just drops in. I know the thought of a chance meeting isn’t why we came to the store, but I can’t help but wonder if it might happen.

We wander up the steps to the fiction section. I learn some authors have different publishers in America and Canada, others don’t. (One reason for this is that Canadian authors who want to be eligible for Canadian literary awards might need to be published by Canadian publishers.) I learn why, even with the same publisher, the American edition will be priced differently than the Canadian. (The price is set many months in advance, so the publisher must estimate the exchange rate. Also, shipping costs need to be factored in.) I see the tie-in merchandising area, which is extensive indeed.

As I snap this photo of Jean, I wonder whether Indigo might prohibit the use of photography in their stores. I know when I worked for Barnes & Noble, part of my job was to prevent people from taking pictures. The concern involved security; we needed to make sure there could be no visual record of anything that might provide information useful to a thief. Might Indigo have the same policy?

Moments later, a staff person comes up to me with a slightly suspicious look.

I immediately ask if it’s all right for me to take pictures of the store. “Will you be using a flash?” she asks.

It seems an odd question, but one I can easily answer. “No.”

“You can’t take any shots of fixtures.”

“I won’t.”

Then she notices the book in Jean’s hand. “What’s that?” the staff person – Lorna, I see on her name tag – asks.

“That’s her new book!” Jean says enthusiastically. “It’s not out until May 4.”

Jean takes it from Jean, holds it up, and says, “What a stand-out cover! And it’s so beautiful!”

And Jean, thinking far more quickly than I, says, “It’s a copy for you! Rachel will be happy to sign it.”

Jean is startled and thrilled and amazed. While Jean digs a pen out of her bag, Lorna asks me what the book is about. “That sounds wonderful!” she says. Then, as I sign, she explains why she was concerned about the flash on the camera. “We have two customers on the floor right now who have epilepsy,” she says. “They have problems when they see a flash.”

I look up at her, and say, “So you’re sensitive to the needs of people with disabilities.”

She nods at me with a smile. “Yes,” she says. “I am.”

We pose for another photo – without a flash, of course. And I remember that, on my American pre-sale tour, I kept having serendipitous encounters with people who turned out to be writers, family members of someone with a disability, and travelers at turning points in their own lives; and our exchanges, brief though they were, left us both newly revived. I might not have met Heather, but serendipity has clearly accompanied me to Canada, too.

Jean, Melanie, and I hastily walk for a few blocks – which look strikingly like 57th Street in Manhattan – to Annona Restaurant, where we’re to have High Tea with other book-related people.

(Actually, Melanie explains, if it’s before dinner, it’s considered Low Tea. But Low Tea doesn’t sound very appealing. So she calls it High Tea.)

Again, our guests have already arrived. They are a bookseller from Ben McNally, a sales manager from Canadian Manda Group, and an associate in the Literary Arts Department of Harbourfront Centre, a cultural events organization that, among other things, hosts a prestigious festival of authors every fall. Terri and Martha have joined us, too.

Since I wasn’t able to eat lunch, I’m very hungry by now. Fortunately, High Tea includes not only tea poured into elegant china with floral designs, but little sandwiches. I order the vegetarian option, and get a small plate with five different delicious treats.

But once again I don’t get to eat, at least for awhile. Instead, I share my story about the writing of the book. This time I manage to do so with minimal tears. However, when the questions then come, my answers lead me to talk about what happened with my mother years ago, and therefore with yesterday’s reunion with Donna. Again, I can’t stop myself from welling up. Neither can some of the others. Martha’s pack of tissues gets used up.

But it’s time to go – now to the airport with Jean for our flights home. I sign books, I hug everyone, I grab some extra sandwiches. At the car, Melanie and I have one more moment together. I want to tell her how incredibly grateful I am for everything she’s done. But in the flurry of the goodbye, I don’t say just what I want, the way I want it. This is the problem with so many goodbyes. You don’t have the presence of mind to express yourself adequately. You forget to say the most important thing. You blurt out something you later can’t believe you said.

You’re so sad about the loss to come that you get clumsy.

So with only half of what I want to say having been said, Jean and I make our sortie. And half an hour later, at the airport, Jean and I part company, too. I am on a different flight, to a different city, and we wave as I run off to get my ticket.

Only when I reach the ticket agent do I learn that my flight has been delayed, and it will miss my connection, and so I will have to spend the night in a hotel near the airport, waiting. The ticket agent kindly makes the arrangements (all paid for by the airline), and sends me on my way.

And so I check into the Sheraton, and settle in. This hotel has no nifty see-through shower. It has no view except a rooftop parking lot. It has no delicious treats, no Lornas, no crying booksellers, no interviewer who turns out to be a sibling, no bus drivers, no missionaries, no serendipitous encounters.

But it has something else: time with absolutely nothing scheduled.

Life is, as any bus driver can tell you, a long chain of entrances and sorties, greetings and farewells, losses and founds. They can happen so fast, and we can get so easily caught up in the next cab ride, appointment, friendship, chapter in our lives, that we don’t take the time to let the goodbyes linger.

So I decide to take this unscheduled, unexpected gift of time to just sit at the desk in my hotel room, look at these photos, and remember the pleasures of this trip. Tomorrow I’ll go home. Later this week I’ll fly again, this time to Kentucky, where I’ll be giving a talk. And soon May 4th will be here, and with it many new hellos. Right now, though, I just stay a little longer with these people, letting myself feel the hugs of the last two days, enjoying the gentle sparkle of each person.

Family Network TV is a new internet TV channel founded by Susan Stephens, an energetic and visionary grandmother of a boy with cerebral palsy. The shows on Family Network TV focus on families who are living with disabilities, with the goal being to unite the special needs community worldwide. Susan Stephens, Vice President Tara Ecklund, and a team of fifty parent and sibling volunteers have poured their time and love into making this dream into a reality. Family Network TV made its internet debut at the end of February, 2011.

The Family Network TV show “What’s Happening” is hosted by fellow sibling and writer Mary McHugh. Mary recently interviewed me about the genesis of my upcoming novel, The Story of Beautiful Girl, which will hit the stores on May 4, 2011, and asked me to give some behind-the-scenes insights into the writing process. Mary’s interview with me was conducted on Oovoo, an online video chat service, and posted soon after Family Network TV launched, on February 28, 2011.

To watch the fourteen-minute interview, click on the first video below.

And if you like this video and this format, I hope you’ll check out Family Network TV and see the many other programs they offer.

Here’s to a bright future, Susan, Tara, Mary, and all the people who make up Family Network TV! You have my gratitude and best wishes.

And suddenly, it was 5:30. Time to race down the hallway of this Washington, DC hotel to take the elevator from the sixteenth to the first floor. Time to snake my way through the throngs of bookstore owners and publishers’ sales reps and fifty-five authors coming out with books this spring. Time to enter the gigantic ballroom adorned with delectable hors d’oeuvres I would have no time to eat, make my way to a table piled high with advanced reader’s copies of my soon-to-be-released novel, shake the hand of the internationally famous writer sharing my table, and prepare to sign The Story of Beautiful Girl for hundreds of booksellers.

Time for the big time.

But first, one quick check in my hotel mirror.

One year ago, I never could have imagined I would find myself at this moment in my life. I had just spent three years writing The Story of Beautiful Girl, almost all of it without showing the book to others or even disclosing to those closest to me that I was writing it. I felt I owed it to the characters in the book – who’d come to feel fully alive and emotionally connected to me – to give them the privacy to reach their fullest potential first. After all, the two main characters are people with disabilities caught up in dire situations. In some ways their story mirrors the stories of many people with disabilities I’ve met, read about, cared about, and loved. The book also tells a powerful and important history that has been hidden from or overlooked by America for so long, it might as well be a secret. So for three years, I filled my characters’ spirits with my knowledge, hopes, and heart, feeling compelled to give them all I had before introducing them to others.

As a result, when my agent submitted The Story of Beautiful Girl to publishers last January, it had probably been seen by fewer than ten people. To my delight and amazement, Grand Central Publishing made an offer within six days of receiving the book. The editor was over the moon about the book, and Grand Central is an imprint at Hachette Book Group, one of the largest and most successful publishers in the business, so I knew my book had found a good home.

But what a great home it turned out to be.

Last June, soon after the edits were completed and a publication date was set for May 4, 2011, my editor called. “A lot of people here are reading your book,” she said almost breathlessly, “and they really love it.” It was nice to hear this, but I didn’t understand what that might really mean.

I started to get a hint of it at the end of the summer, when she called back. “They like your book so much, they want to meet you.” In my entire writing career – five previous books, published between 1990 and 2010 – it had always been me who wanted to meet people in the publishing house, not them who wanted to meet me.

I went to New York in September for what turned out to be a big meeting full of major executives. I wrote about this meeting in an earlier blog post, but the very abbreviated version is that the individuals in that room – publicists, editors, sales and marketing people, etc. – were profoundly affected by my book. They made it clear they wanted it to be a big success.

Again, I thanked people. Again, I didn’t really understand what was happening.

Then, a few weeks later, I heard from the publicist who was handling my book. “We’re going to send you on a pre-sale tour,” he said. “Are you free the last two weeks in January and the first in February?” I had never even heard the term “pre-sale tour”, but I said yes, sure, I’d be free. And then the wheels were in motion.

I soon learned that a pre-sale tour is a rare and special thing, done selectively at the request of the Sales department and/or booksellers. It consists of the publisher sending the author around the country months before a book comes out. In each city, the publisher sets up meetings with booksellers, which, in my case, would be at a series of private dinners in upscale restaurants, attended by people from the publishing house and up to fourteen or so booksellers. During the dinner, I would be expected to talk about my book in an informal way. The goal would be to help build interest and excitement for my book, and to build buzz. I would go to eight cities, for eight dinners, in twelve days – after a big kick-off event at a huge booksellers’ conference in Washington, DC.

That was the conference I was about to attend now.

I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. I’d had such a busy day, I’d checked into the Marriott Crystal City at the last possible minute, three scarves around my neck to shield me from the chill of the January dusk, stomach mewing for its usual five p.m. snack, hair askew from a wildly busy day and a hurried walk here from the Metro. I’d run to my sixteenth floor room, hastily tossed my coat and two scarves, and chucked a few pumpkin seeds in my mouth. But oh, my hair. My usually lively, bouncy, curly hair had lost its verve. It slouched and sulked. It wanted a nap.

No nap allowed! Especially because it was my own fault that my hair was looking so lackluster. I could have just decided, when the publisher set up the pre-sale tour, that I’d do what I needed to do and nothing more. But no. I felt so committed to my characters, and to the secret history told by their lives, that I decided I had to make the most of my time in each city. So for the last few weeks, I’d been setting up meetings with people in the disability community in every city I’d be visiting, and today – the first city, the first day – had been packed.

I’d begun it by taking the Amtrak to Washington, then meeting a prominent person from Easter Seals Project Action. Brought together over lunch in La Taberna Del Alabardero Restaurant near the White House, introduced by a friend in the public transit world, we talked about Easter Seals, my book, and our mutual commitment to social justice for people with disabilities. Then I’d had tea with Joseph Shapiro, author of one of the most important books in the disability community, No Pity (see photo). Only after I’d hopped onto the Metro, gotten lost in an underground maze of shops, and made my way to the Marriott Crystal City, had I arrived at my real destination, the American Booksellers Association’s conference, called the Winter Institute. No wonder my hair was rebelling.

I did the quick-fix trick known to all of us with curly hair: I wet a comb, pulled it furiously through my hair, and plumped up the dripping locks with my fingers. Curls reformed. Revival arrived. I snapped a photo of myself, ran out the door – and then, I was on the tour.

The ballroom was large and crowded. Booksellers from all over the country milled about, sipping wine, nibbling finger food, perusing the list of authors taking their seats at the book signing tables. A lovely person from Grand Central found me and led me through the throngs to my own table. As I looked around, I remembered reading the previous day’s Publisher’s Lunch, an online daily that everyone in the industry reads:

“With each passing year the annual ABA Winter Institute has become a showcase for emerging writers and a place to pre-launch what publishers hope will be summer hits – especially in fiction. Some of the 40-odd authors who appeared at Wi5 last year included Adam Ross (MR. PEANUT), Danielle Trussoni (ANGELOLOGY) Justin Cronin (as part of the massive pre-pub blitz for THE PASSAGE), Brady Udall (THE LONELY POLYGAMIST) and Karl Marlantes (MATTERHORN). For Wi6, which starts today in Washington, DC, the number of attending authors is up to 56 and chatter on Facebook and Twitter indicates it’s going to be an even bigger deal. To that end, I’ve scoured the list of attending authors and highlighted titles, and picked out a number that you have either heard about already or can expect to hear more about soon.”

The writer then mentioned The Story of Beautiful Girl – a highlighted book! My heart leapt. Another prominent book was Guilt By Association, a thriller coming out in April by the famous person who’d be sharing my table. The famous person I was walking up to now. A smiling, attractive woman with a face known to billions. Marcia Clark, the prosecutor for the O.J. Simpson trial.

“So great to meet you,” we both said, shaking hands, and, despite all her fame, Marcia (yes, we were suddenly on a first-name basis) immediately came off as cheerful, friendly, and spirited. She was also very attractive, and clearly as happy as I about being featured at this conference – and being with our publisher. I wanted to ask her so many things, though none of them about the trial, which I hadn’t watched. I wondered how she’d felt going from the public world of the courtroom to the private world of the writer. I wondered if she’d liked writing fiction even more than she’d expected. I wondered if the earlier part of her day had been just as uplifting as mine.

But the lines were already forming, so even though we were right beside each other, we barely got to speak except to share pens or catch our breath together during the rare quiet moment. We had to focus on the booksellers.

And what fun that was. I actually stood beside my books rather than sit, a habit I’ve had since my book Riding The Bus With My Sister came out and I realized that some people in my book signing lines were so moved by the book – or so eager to share their own emotional story – that they would be crying. Being only five feet tall, I already felt far away from anyone standing on the other side of a table, so I just decided to do all my signings standing up, making it easier to look someone in the eye, and, when they wanted, to give them a hug.

So I stood, and rather than risk getting into long discussions with each bookseller and holding up the line, I drew half a dozen into a semi-circle at a time. That way I could tell them about the book – but, just as importantly, I could tell them that I’d once been a bookseller too, and could make suggestions for ways they could hand-sell this book to their customers. It was thrilling to be able to share all I’d learned this last year about why The Story of Beautiful Girl is striking such a chord in early readers. It was even more thrilling when some of the booksellers looked at me with huge smiles or tearful eyes and said, “I’ve already read it – and I love it!” And then we hugged.

I signed advanced reader’s copies of the book for two and a half hours before I even looked up. My mewing stomach was now wailing, but I didn’t care. My hair was doing whatever it wanted to do, and I didn’t care. I just cared that my characters had moved into some readers’ lives already, and touched them so deeply.

After the signing wound down, twenty-two booksellers, three sales people from my publisher’s, Marcia, and I walked three brisk blocks to McCormick and Schmick’s, another nice restaurant. We paraded into a private room in the back, where we sat at a table so long, it had to be positioned on a diagonal, with Marcia on one end, me on the other.

And then we ate a delicious dinner, trading seats halfway through the meal so we could talk to every bookseller there. A number of them had already read my book and were brimming with affection. One said to me, “I loved your book so much, I couldn’t breathe until I got to the last line.” Another said, “The only thing I’m concerned about with your book is that it will sell so fast I won’t have enough copies.” Others, who hadn’t yet read the book, said, “I’ll be seeing you on your tour” – in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver – “and I’ll read it by then!” And with all of them, their bonds with the sales force were clear. These weren’t just business people. They were friends who were devoted to books, and reading, and the life of the mind. They were happy to be with me, and happy to be together. They were the circle of support that all people – with or without disabilities, with or without books – deserve to have. And we were clinking glasses together.

It was heady, to be sure. But finally I broke away, went to the ladies room, and looked at myself once again in the mirror.

Could this really be happening? Yes.

Might the story I wrote – a story that I think could make a real difference – find its audience? Well, maybe yes.

Could I keep going for two more weeks of this, when I’ve already eaten more calories in one day than I usually eat in a week? When I’m setting up so many extra meetings with people for lunch and tea that my curls will need a whole lot more than a wet comb? And when, no matter what anyone might think about my book, I’m still the person who sat alone in a room for three years with no one but Beautiful Girl, the love of her life, Homan, her baby Julia, her devoted staff person Kate, and the stranger she trusts, Martha – caring only that I would do well by them?

Yes I can. Yes, I must.

I tell myself I will share the experience through this blog, from my next stop – Portland, OR, to which I fly on Mon, Jan. 24 – to my last, Denver, which I leave on Sat., Feb. 5.

I tell myself that I will have at least as much fun as I had on this glorious night – and maybe even more.

And I tell myself that isn’t, I now know, the big time.

There is no big time.

There is only one hand-shake and conversation and hug after another, in rooms large and small, over meals grand and simple, with people who have, if this first night has been any indication, truly and wonderfully big hearts.

To learn more about The Story of Beautiful Girl, read an excerpt, see a video, and pre-order a copy, please check out my newly updated website, www.rachelsimon.com.

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Philadelphia was bathing in thirty-four degree sunshine when my husband Hal dropped me at airport. I lugged my bags into the terminal, noting that they felt heavier than they usually do when I travel to give talks around the country. I could have chalked the weight up to faulty memory, as I hadn’t done a presentation since the season of short sleeves. My energy level was also a notch below robust, as I’d just fought off a minor case of the sniffles.

But memory and muscles were fine. My suitcases were stuffed like overburdened sleds because I was on my way to Fairbanks, Alaska. There, over the next five days, I would be doing three presentations related to my book Riding the Bus with My Sister. And a trip to Fairbanks in the wool-fleece-and-thermals month of December simply necessitates bulk.

I’d almost squealed with delight when the Fairbanks Resource Agency contacted me in the spring and asked me to speak at their annual gala in December. Although I’d spoken for many service providers that support adults with disabilities and had even done such talks in Anchorage six years ago, I’d never been as far north as Fairbanks. And I’d been to Anchorage in April, right after “breakup,” when the winter snow suddenly melts, and when sunrise is at six in the morning, sunset near ten at night. I was now heading into a land of subzero temperatures, where daylight would commence after ten in the morning and depart by two thirty in the afternoon.

I made my way to the gate for the first of my flights, remembering Hal’s reaction when I got the invitation.

“Are you kidding?” he’d said.

“It’ll be an adventure!”

“Fairbanks in December?”

“If Jack London could do it, so can I.”

He’d made a scrunched-up face that he hadn’t unscrunched in the months since.

To be fair, Hal’s reticence about this trip was not simply the result of him envisioning himself slogging through a wind-swept, snow-drifted, dark-as-sleep nowhere. It was more a result of him knowing me.

I am not just someone who gets cold. I am someone who often wears a jacket in the summer, and in the winter I wear coats even inside the house. I get a chill deep inside my chest, and once it starts, there seems little I can do to stop it. This isn’t just imagination: touch my hands during these episodes, as people inevitably do when I meet them at talks, and you’ll be grabbing onto an ice glove.

How, Hal and other caring friends wondered as the day for my trip neared, would I possibly endure the extremes of a place like Fairbanks? Which, we found out the night before he took me to the airport, can get as cold as seventy below? And where sunshine itself is powerless to induce warmth? “You’ll spend the rest of your life thawing after this,” he said.

But how could I say no? I would be seeing a faraway land close to the tip of the globe, where all that is familiar to me about light and dark, winter and summer, ordinary and extraordinary would become but a memory, and new rules of day, night, cold, time, and even the colors of the sky would take its place. How could I not take the opportunity to shake up all I know about my relationship to things so fundamental, I can barely imagine my consciousness without them?

Besides, I kept wondering: what kind of people actually live there?

I got my first answer to this question soon after I arrived at the gate. My flight, which was supposed to depart at 1:00 PM, was delayed until at least 3:00 PM. This one change would prevent me from making my second connection, and so I spent the start of my trip rescheduling all my subsequent flights. My original plan was for three flights that would last fourteen hours. Now I would be taking four flights lasting twenty-two hours. A test of mere stamina became a test of endurance.

This is what Alaskans live with, I understood as I hunkered down for my first, second, and third waits. Not just snow and ice and wind and midnight sun and daytime night – but the need to expect the unexpected. And all the patience and fortitude that might be required.

I can do this, I thought, hauling my carry-ons through the concourses at Chicago O’Hare and Seattle-Tacoma International and Ted Stevens Anchorage Airport. Each time my effort proved harder and more laborious, and soon I was cursing myself for not having crammed even more into my checked bag. But then I’d think about the thousands of intrepid individuals who made this journey before the age of flight. My pitiful twenty-two hours would bear little resemblance to the months, or years, of hardship they endured on rail, stagecoaches, horseback, and ships. I told myself to enjoy the luxury of dozing on a seat in an airport, with music and televisions blaring, and babies crying, and, in Seattle, a water fountain that blasted loud glug-glug sounds whenever it was used. Stop kvetching, I told myself. Be tough.

Fortunately I forgot that sometimes, when people made the trek to the Last Frontier, the duration and the physical demands were so great, they fell ill, or even worse. This could happen to the hardiest of souls. So it was quite possible it could also happen to a twenty-first century city girl from the Northeast.

Who’d just—she thought—gotten over the sniffles.

And whose final, fourth flight—the one she’d had to reschedule herself onto—required her to walk across the tarmac in twenty below, schlepping the unbearably leaden carry-ons, so sleep-deprived and so confused by the darkness and the snow that she almost walked in the wrong direction.

So by the time I landed in Fairbanks at 7:00 AM (11:00 AM to me), my fate was sealed. I thought I was just exhausted from the four thousand mile ordeal that took me from thirty-nine degrees latitude to sixty-four degrees latitude and from thirty degrees Fahrenheit to twenty-two below. But my exhaustion was actually a portend—and the proof that my curiosity, adventurousness, and Jack London admiration surpassed the current limits of my constitution.

But for the first day I gallivanted about, unaware that my immune system was about to shut down. I was tired but with such a brief period of sunlight, I wanted to see all I could. After all, I immediately realized that Fairbanks was not what Hal and I had envisioned, and I realized I wasn’t just in a land of cold and dark. I was also in a land of surprises.

For starters, this was not a windswept, snow-drifted, dark-as-sleep nowhere.

There was, in fact, no wind—there rarely is in Fairbanks, I learned. Nor were there snow drifts, because Fairbanks tends to be too cold for snow; the more common weather challenge is ice fog, which so impedes visibility that it’s one of the few conditions that might close schools for the day. The terrain was mostly flat, and I didn’t even see mountains in the distance.

This was not a nowhere, either. It was a place with four military bases, a large university, a museum that’s an architectural wonder, multi-lane roads that pass the same stores we have in Delaware, a population of over thirty thousand—and more people who’ve relocated there from all over the country than I can remember seeing anywhere else. In fact, I heard almost every kind of accent a person can hear in America.

And whether they came from New Jersey, Long Island, Minnesota, Phoenix, Colorado, or California, no one I met, and no one I saw, allowed the weather to inhibit them in the slightest. They went to jobs and stores and coffee shops and movies and everything you can think of just as much as anyone in a warmer climate.

They did it all without the bulky clothes I’d schlepped across the country, preferring layers topped by sweatshirts or jackets when they were outside. And, when they were inside, a significant number of people wore t-shirts and short sleeves, even if the rooms were cool. How was this possible, I found myself asking over and over. To which the answer would inevitably be, “You just get used to it.”

I spent most of my first, still-healthy day with my escort, Eva Norwood, Community Development Director for Fairbanks Resource Agency. She picked me up at the airport, drove me to my hotel and then, over the course of the day, around Fairbanks. We rode in her trusty station wagon, fleece blankets on our laps, a horizontal crack across her windshield. “It’s impossible to avoid the cracks,” she said as we made our way along the snow-slicked roads—her car, with its studded snow tires, never skidding. “They cover the roads with gravel, and the little pebbles are always flying into your windshield. You can spend all winter repairing it, so I figured I’d just wait.”

Gravel-strewn roads and fleece blankets were just two ways people made their peace with driving in Fairbanks. In the interest of keeping their engines warm, they also leave parked cars running while they’re inside, as I discovered when Eva and I went to lunch at a packed Thai restaurant. They might even have upgraded their cars to include remote starters, which they have to reactivate every two hours. Those of more modest means can plug their cars into the engine block heaters that dot many, but not all, of the parking lots I saw.

The highlight of my tourist expeditions came that first afternoon, when Eva brought me to the Museum of the North. Located at the university, the striking building was designed to convey a sense of Alaska, with shapes and spaces evocative of alpine ridges, glaciers, and whales. The collection was equally stunning. One enormous room takes visitors through the five major areas of Alaska, each with its own history, animals, folk arts. Eva had once been a docent here, and by the end of my private tour, I had a vastly enriched appreciation for the state, and the resourcefulness of the people who’d inhabited it for millenia. Other rooms featured artwork by classic and contemporary Alaskan painters and sculptors. (At the end of this blog, I have additional photos I took while I was there.)

And then there was a room unlike anything I’ve experienced anywhere. Called “The Place Where You Go To Listen,” and created by composer John Luther Adams, it is a continuously changing sound and light art installation—with both the visual and the audio experiences derived from, as an article in the New Yorker once put it, “information from seismological, meteorological, and geomagnetic stations in various parts of Alaska…fed into a computer and transformed into an intricate, vibrantly colored field of electronic sound.” The sound on the day I visited hummed and tom-tommed, with harmonizing echoes like a choir in a cathedral; the colors were magenta shading into deep red. It differs at every visit, Eva told me; sometimes you hear the sun create more harmony, the moon make dapples of sound, and the Northern lights ring across the ceiling like bells. The room reminded me of my beloved light tunnel in the Detroit Airport, which I wrote about in The House On Teacher’s Lane. But this was a tiny space, and the sounds and lights weren’t pre-set; they were happening in real time, reflecting the current state of this corner of the planet. I could have stayed in there forever.

But the sun was setting, and as we emerged from the galleries in the museum and looked out the windows over Fairbanks, I learned that I needed to correct yet another misunderstanding. I’d thought of this part of Alaska as a place of extremes. Standing beside me at the window, though, Eva pointed out that it’s a place of subtleties.

At this time of year, the sun doesn’t rise, or set, in the way it does back in the Northeast. Instead, it stays low along the horizon. So the sky is a study in golds and pinks and pale blues—which then reflect on the snow. “We don’t have white snow here,” she told me. “You think it’s white until you really look and see it’s not.”

Later, when I went out for dinner with three other people affiliated with Fairbanks Resource Agency, I learned more about subtleties. “We don’t have real darkness here,” there told me. “You think it’s dark but it’s not.” I asked how that could be; when I looked out the window, it sure looked like my idea of night. “Yes,” they said, “but with the snow reflecting the stars and the moon, we don’t really have dark skies.” Not the way the skies can be dark in, say, rural Hawaii or Arizona, they added, where they sometimes spend the winter, and where the nights are so completely dark that they actually feel scared.

In Fairbanks, they added, they never feel scared. Rather, they feel at peace with nature—and embraced by everyone around them. “It’s one big family here,” they said. “If you see someone broken down on the road, you stop to help. That’s just the way it is.” They all moved here from the lower 48, and love Fairbanks so much, they never want to live anywhere else.

I went to bed that first night, amazed at how wrong I’d been about this place, and eager to learn so much more.

But by the next morning, my immune system had surrendered. I woke with a ferocious sore throat and thudding headache. I still hoped to get out to see other sites, to stand a chance of catching a glimpse of the aurora borealis, to meet new people and learn more surprises.

I did manage to have a few more conversations. During a marvelous dinner with Emily Ennis, Executive Director of FRA, I learned she entered the field decades ago by without training, family ties, or preconceptions; she just walked into a room of adults with disabilities in Fairbanks who needed to be occupied during the day, and instantly understood that they were full, whole individuals desirous of living meaningful lives. I also connected with a waitress in my hotel restaurant who was the sister of a woman with a disability, and who spoke tearfully about her sister’s transition from living in the state institution to a community setting. Politics also crept into some discussions. Yet even though folks in the lower 48 seem to think immediately about Sarah Palin when they hear the word “Alaska,” the people I met were less inclined to talk about her than about the recent, contentious Senate race, which Lisa Murkowski won over Joe Miller by a write-in vote.

I also managed to get through all three of my events—a book discussion, a visit to a writing class at the university, and the big, fancy gala dinner. I enjoyed all three, and I think I satisfied my audiences at each.

But my tourist expeditions were behind me.

So I spent the rest of my time in Alaska in my hotel room, savoring yet another unexpected aspect of this part of the world. In the dark and the quiet, it is easy to sleep. Your dreams rise and fall like whales, your thoughts beat steadily as the bells of the Northern lights, and your feelings ease through you as subtly as horizon light.

I am no Jack London. I would have made a frail pioneer.

But I’m hoping my host asks me back, and I’m told they probably will. I’ll be keeping my sense of adventure warm until then.

I hate to admit this, but I’m not a vacation person.

I understand the attractions of vacation: getting away from routines, obligations, and the familiar. Seeing new landscapes, visiting old friends, returning to beloved terrain. Spending private, leisurely time having serendipitous adventures with my wonderful husband Hal.

All of these things have a great appeal to me. But because, as a writer, I tend to thrive when I adhere to solitude, silence, a slow pace, and discipline, I feel I have to rediscover a social and spontaneous self when I jaunt about on a vacation. That’s not always difficult, and sometimes I quite welcome the shift. However, the backlog of emails and the build-up of obligations, along with a renewed delight in the world of real, rather than imagined, people and experiences, mean I need many more days than I care to admit to return to the quiet place in my mind where I do my work.

Also, for years now I’ve traveled a fair amount to do talks, so I’ve seen all the new landscapes, old friends, and even beloved terrain I might desire- and my hosts pay my way. But vacations cost money – sometimes a lot more money than I feel comfortable spending.

And, on top of all that, sometimes things go wrong. Then there you are, far from home, and paying for the privilege of getting the flu, suffering through car trouble, hiding out from bad weather, losing a favorite possession – or coping with the likes of something you never even dreamed you might deal with.

But the one compelling reason for me to set all these concerns aside is that Hal likes to get away now and then, and, as I mentioned, when we’re away together, we allow ourselves to wander around back streets, engage in lengthy conversations with gregarious strangers, poke around in quirky shops and museums, and open our minds, and hearts, to so much we don’t usually see.

This past summer, Hal proposed that we make a trip to Charlottesville, VA. He went to college at the University of Virginia, and since he took off five years in the middle of his undergraduate career, during which time he lived in town and managed the pre-eminent record store of that era, Back Alley Disks, he still has friends in the area, as well as the type of fondness we all have for the place that bestowed a bounty of pleasing memories in our youth. My affection for Charlottesville is more subdued, though I do find its historic buildings attractive and its rolling hills restorative. I also happen to have an emotional tie there: a close friend from seventh grade moved to Charlottesville after high school.

But nothing beats visiting a place where your spouse gushes loving memories every few feet, catches up with people who’ve been dear to him for decades, and feels a sense of peace simply by breathing the air.

So every few years we take a trip to Charlottesville, and this summer was one of those years.

In May, Hal asked me when I’d be free during the summer. I told him the few dates when I had speaking commitments but otherwise the calendar was open. He then narrowed it down by seeing what interfered least with his responsibilities at work. Finally we picked the dates of Aug. 12 to 17. Hal filled out the forms at work to get official approval. We booked the hotel. We emailed our friends and scheduled our visits.

And then something happened that I never could have dreamed of. Three weeks before we were to leave, the person who handles my speaking engagements called. We’d just received an invitation for me to come to Casper, Wyoming to speak to special education teachers. “When,” I asked. “August.” “What’s the date?” I said, getting nervous. “August 16th.”

Oh no! Could Hal’s work responsibilities allow for us to change the dates?

No.

Did the folks in Casper have the flexibility to change the date?

No.

Should we just give up on our vacation?

Definitely no.

So we decided to compress our tiny, long-awaited, five-day vacation into a mini, two-day vacation. We’d wedge in as much vacation pleasure as we could, and then I’d hop on a plane – or, really, three planes, starting in the little airport in Charlottesville and landing in the little airport in Casper – to do my talk. And although we wouldn’t be together for the second half of our truncated vacation, we would continue the same spirit of adventure and openness.

Yes, something had gone wrong. But like many people who’ve had things go wrong on vacations – and, at some point, doesn’t that include all of us? – we decided to have wonderful experiences anyway.

And so we did.

If you, like me, are the brother or sister of a person with a disability, you have concerns, emotions, and maybe even responsibilities that the siblings of typical individuals don’t contend with.

You might have protected your brother or sister from the neighborhood bully when growing up. Or resented that they didn’t have any chores when you had several. Or relished the contagious glee they expressed when they won a round of Go Fish, or danced in the living room, or greeted you every time you came home. Or felt guilty that you could ride your bike to see friends while they couldn’t ride a bike and didn’t have friends. Or burst with pride when they reached major milestones that you’d hit many years earlier.

From a very early age, you might have worried about what would happen when your parents died.

From a very early age, your vocabulary included words like “IEP”, “group home”, “sheltered workshop”, and “SSI” – words that your friends didn’t know existed.

From a very early age, you felt older and more mature than your friends.

From a very early age, you knew that sometimes you were called upon to act like a brother or sister, and other times like a parent.

And from a very early age, you looked askance at a world that mistreated, ignored, stereotyped, mocked, and cut the funding for people like your siblings – and you couldn’t, for the life of you, understand how anyone could be so insensitive and even ignorant.

If you’re the sibling of a person with a disability, you would have loved a conference I attended this summer, the first International Sibling Conference, held in Greenwich, CT. For three days in early August, adult siblings from all over the world gathered in the sumptuous Hyatt Regency Greenwich to talk about our worries, support each other emotionally, and make friends in the sibling community. By the time it ended, we knew that, regardless of our personal struggles, we would always have others to turn to.

As at all conferences, the three days were full of receptions, presentations, and panel discussions, and every single event, from the largest addresses to the entire crowd to the smallest and most spontaneous moments in the hotel lobby, led to insights about my own life and connections with so many others. I did already know several people there, having encountered them at previous conferences or in my inbox, but I so enjoyed seeing old friends again – and meeting a ton of others for the first time.

Here is a photographic depiction of some of the high points of the conference, which was the brainchild of the people at ARI of Connecticut, Inc., The Sibling Leadership Network, and the Kennedy Center, Inc. I hope it gives you a good taste of the experience, so that, if you too are a sibling, you can join us when we meet again next year. (Please contact Dr. Bob DiDomenico if you’d like to get notified: didomenicor@arict.org)

International Sibling Conference: Channel 12 News Coverage from John Kramer on Vimeo.