28

I am flying to Denver, having been sent there for a conference that my new employer wishes me to attend. I am typing on my employer-issued laptop (never had such a thing), marveling at the shift my life has taken in the past two weeks.

Two weeks ago, I was flying home from a weekend in St. Louis where I celebrated the first three decades of my life with family and friends, with libations and foodstuffs, with talking and running.

My actual birthday dawned relatively clear and I took myself up to Raleigh, to the North Carolina Museum of Art, hoping that the weather would hold. Historically, it rains on my birthday; I tell myself this every year so that I am not disappointed when it does.

I bought myself some bread, some cheese, some fruit and headed there to the great expanse of green. The museum itself is closed on Monday, but the attached park is open all of the time. It was chilly when I arrived, the wind blowing across the hill, the sun trying to poke through the clouds.

I spread out a blanket and sat back. The sun, she came through.

From late morning until midafternoon, I laid about on that blanket in that park. Listened to the birds, watched a group of schoolchildren. Noshed on some bread with goat cheese, nibbled on some unripe mango. Savored the slow passing of time, loved the warmth and then even the burn that the sun gave my cheeks. Walked the paths, wondered at the trail of my life.

I thought about the upcoming weekend, the writer’s retreat in Little Switzerland, North Carolina at Wild Acres, on a hilltop near the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The afternoon turned rather warm and my face flushed painfully. I gathered my things and headed home, where friends waited to toast me.

And as evening, fell, it rained.

The rest of the week passed slowly; much like the laziness with which North Carolina has been getting around to summer, I tried to study this last week in slowness. I laid in the sun, shading my red face with a floppy hat. I went to town for iced tea. I did yoga, I ran. I gathered myself.

I read the stories assigned to the workshops I wanted to attend. I toyed with packing my coffee making equipment, wondered if my assigned roommate would find it charming or snobbish. But on Wednesday, I almost panicked, almost gave up my place, because I had to write an introduction to myself in no more than thirty words. As if I were going to be published in the magazine.

But you are not a writer, the voice in my head said plainly.

I stared stupidly at my email, thinking about the note I would compose. But then I stopped; I sat with my coffee and thought about what I have been doing the past few years of my life. Then, the introduction came easily, rose up from the depths:

Erin is a Midwesterner living in the North Carolina sandflats. Though dubbed “spatially challenged” by close friends, she has managed to run and write about twelve half marathons.

28 words to introduce myself to over 100 strangers.