A year in letters

This inaugural anniversary feels significant, even for me.

May 10, 2024

I’m not one for birthdays, mother’s day cards, or any sort of obligatory fanfare. In fact, I really don’t like any of that. At all.

Case in point: When our 25th wedding anniversary rolled around in 2017, we scheduled a huge party, officially deemed “The Sauerkraut Ball Party.” No one knew there was a little anniversary behind the gathering until right before I cut the cake.

“We got married 25 years ago in my parents’ living room,” I told the group, “but we never had a proper wedding cake until now.” Everyone ate their share of fancy cake and sauerkraut balls. We all had a blast, and there wasn’t a silver-wrapped gift in sight.

It was perfect.

However ridiculously we track it, time has been like a cosmic accordion since we turned the corner delineating the Before and After Times, going fast one minute and slow the next. It’s been flat out surreal.

Amid these troubled days, The Epistolary has been like a metronome for me. The regular writing for these pages over the past year has been frustrating and difficult, but satisfying as well.

Truth: All I ever wanted to be was a columnist.

I was for a while, until the Great Recession took that gig away. Old school media began disintegrating before our eyes and my one dream drifted further and further away.

Then came the voice: Don’t be a dumbass, Erin. Just write a column and quit feeling sorry for yourself. The Epistolary was born. Is this a vanity project? Maybe, but so be it.

Celebrating a year of writing, however out of character for me, feels well-earned. So here are the top five letters I’ve penned for The Epistolary, determined strictly by hits. I’ll be cheesy and do it backwards.

No. 5: Richard Simmons

On March 22, 2024, I penned an open letter to Richard Simmons. The impetus was my ongoing desire to crawl under a rock much like the affable fitness guru did in 2014. Weirdly enough, as I was drafting the essay, Simmons’ popped up in news feeds on account of a badly worded post.

I nearly dumped the column on account of that, but eventually opted to announce to the world that Simmons is indeed a perfect guardian angel. As it turns out, I wasn’t alone in my affection.

No. 4: The Universe

For years I’ve endeavored to make grand things small and small things grand with my writing. It was—of all things—a mesmerizing YouTube video that encapsulated that goal. From a couple of favorite jigsaw puzzles to a short Disney film I’d watched in seventh grade, the graphic footage evoked so many things in me, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get them all in one essay, but I tried.

Did the Universe get my Jan. 5, 2024 communication? I have no idea, but I’m glad you did.

No. 3: the Huletts

Every week, I sit at this desk and wonder if anyone will give a damn about my idiosyncratic musings.

… no one cares yeah so what just write the goddamn thing erin and stop your bellyaching …

That internal dialogue was never louder than when some news broke about the old Hulett Ore Unloaders down on Cleveland’s Whiskey Island and I decided to sort out my complicated feelings about it here at the keyboard.

My dear reader, you surprise me plenty, but I was completely astonished by the reception my Feb. 23, 2024 letter to that defunct pile of rusted dinosaurs garnered.

No. 2: Stevie

Marking the 30th anniversary of my brother’s suicide was a tall order. I chose to do so by writing a letter to a fictional stripper on April 12, 2024. I cannot recall when Stevie whispered into my ear and sparked the idea, but now I’m glad she did. The end result was absolutely fitting.

So then, Stevie, I don’t know if Stripper Lessons is a good book or a bad book, but I love it because it reminds me of my funny sweet brother before the booze and the world overtook him and moved him to punctuate his life with a single bullet thirty years ago on April 10, 1994.
You know what, babygirl? Johnny left me behind as well. He left all of us behind.

No. 1: You

Insert if you will, a respectful pause.

I am deeply humbled that my most popular effort on these pages is the one that launched it, a May 12, 2023 letter to you, Dear Reader, in which I made a fraught and difficult disclosure. There was nothing easy in the months that led up to that letter, or even several of those that followed, but somehow I made it here and for that I am thankful.