Let’s get this started.

A little intro to what Everyone I've Every Known will be about.

Noah’s parents had a friend named Joan who I had the chance to meet only a handful of times. Like around the high-holy holidays. Like Thanksgiving. I loved being around her. She was easy to listen to and it felt like she had lived hundreds of lives with all of the stories she held. When she passed, I deeply regretted not writing them all down.

I decided that I would collect and write interviews of my family and friends, and then try to expand the practice across everyone I know: work colleagues, bartenders, the guy who runs the movie theater at the bottom of the hill in town, etc.

This was almost a year ago, now.

Earlier this year, I was called home to say goodbye to my Nana. As I tripped around my apartment throwing random items into an overnight bag, I became overwhelmed with a deep itch to write. I grabbed an old notebook, a pen off my desk, and raced over to the train station to head down the Hudson River. Two hours til Penn Station.

I sat in a window seat in the middle of the train car. With only a few other folks in the seats nearby, I cracked open a beer and took out the notebook.

Page 1 was a log of what Noah ate on March 15th, 2022.

Page 2 just had the word “storytelling”.

I started on Page 3.

I bought green pens knowing the ink would be black. I’ve never been without a grandmother before. Both of my parents’ mothers have been alive my whole life. There’s something about women dying that feels different. Like they were supposed to be here forever. And that would be normal. Maybe we realize in the moment that they are going to leave us, that we’re going to have to find love from somewhere else.

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything down. My handwriting is sloppy. If I were investigated for any reason, and they needed writing samples to compare to the scene of the crime, mine would be wildly insufficient.

The things you take with you when you die:

• Your memories

• How it feels to be you

• Your swimming skills

• Your laugh

• The way snow melts in your hair

• Your faith

• The will to live

She wanted to be different, and she was. What did she mean to me? She defined a life that I tried so hard to move away from. And in many ways I was determined to not take her influence with me.

In the end, it all comes with you.

The first interview of this newsletter will be my last conversation with my Nana.

See you back here, soon.

–

But what are my words?
Storm-twisted forests
facing north,
craggy rocks
against day’s
harrowing
fire.

Olav H. Hauge, from “Singing again,” Selected Poems (White Pine Press, 1990)