Day 31: Taps

It’s Saturday evening and I’m watching the sun set behind the buildings across from mine. I was thinking about what to write for my last slice of the Slice of Life Story Challenge 2024, feeling both a sense of accomplishment/relief (one less item on the daily to-do list!) and also sadness, as slicing has become an activity that I have found so rejuvenating this month.

Last night, Ana and I were sharing with Gi how fun this challenge has been for us. I think particularly about how much more I enjoyed it this year, how I built a stronger sense of community with fellow slicers, how I found blogs that I subscribed to and thoroughly enjoyed reading, and how I felt an inspiration for writing that I haven’t felt in a long time (“big magic,” Liz Gilbert might say).

“You should definitely do it with us next year,” Ana encouraged Gi. “It’s so freaking fun.”

As I look out the window, watching the sky change colors, I find myself thinking of the song we used to sing at camp at the end of each evening, Taps:

Day is done. Gone the sun. From the hills, from the lakes, from the skies. All is well. Safely rest. God is nigh.

We would play around with harmonies each time, my friends Alice and Claire and I especially. Then off to our cabins to wash up and get ready for bed, have cabin chat, and go to sleep. Every evening ended the same way, and there was a sense of peace knowing that the next morning, after waking up at 7:30, after the day passed with its activities and meals, we’d end it again with some goodnight circle songs, and always, Taps.

Last year, on the 31st day of the challenge, I reflected on who I was as a writer. I considered blogging more often, writing for the very small audience I’d built, but never managed to do it. I think I wrote one post between then and now. Perhaps it was the focus of my blog that kept me from it (teacher-facing solely), or my imposter syndrome, or the who-cares-what-I’ve-got-to-say, or any of the various life-gets-in-the-way excuses.

This year, I pushed past the discomfort and just wrote. I learned that a simple post about banana bread can remind someone else of their own recipe, have them grabbing the ingredients from their pantry and baking for the loved ones in their lives. I saw how my friends who followed along enjoyed the stories I told, how they were “insiders” knowing the characters I wrote about. This year, I really felt — feel — like a writer again, in a way I haven’t in years.

And then magically, serendipitously, the evening that Ana wrote her slice about whether or not she’d go to Ralph Fletcher’s Quoddy Writing Retreat for teachers this summer, I received an email from him letting me know a spot had opened up and was I still interested?

HECK! YES!

So, a promise to myself: to keep at it. A weekly slice. Because there is comfort in writing regularly, like the comfort of singing Taps on a summer evening in the Berkshires.

Thanks, fellow slicers, thanks, Two Writing Teachers, for hosting, thanks to my readers who encourage me, and thanks to my writing partner (she knows who she is).