Inside Verse
the first pages · June to December 1997

the newest pages  ·  1998 ›

A note from later: when I started this, I centered every line, because that's what a card looks like. It took me until after Christmas to admit that nobody can read four paragraphs centered. I've left these the way they were. Newest at the top. — Y.

Monday, December 22, 1997
Season's Greetings, Personally

Every year I write a few hundred Christmas verses for other people, and every year I sit down to write the little note in our family's own cards and can't think of a thing.

This year it was supposed to be easy, because this year it's our first card as a couple. Travis's mother wanted a photo card, so we had our picture taken at the mall in matching sweaters, which I agreed to in a moment of weakness. Then I sat at the kitchen table with fifty cards and a pen, and I wrote, "Merry Christmas from Travis and Yvette," and stopped. Everything after that sounded like a card. Which is to say it sounded like me at work.

Travis wrote the rest of them. He wrote "Hope you have a great one!" in every single card, in his square accountant handwriting, and you know what, it was perfect. It sounded like a person.

Six months until the wedding. I bought the dress. I'm not describing it here, in case he reads this, which he doesn't.

Thursday, November 27, 1997
The Lights

Thanksgiving at Mom and Dad's. Deanna and Rodger, Travis and me, Grandma, too much food, and Dad asleep in his chair by the third quarter with the remote still in his hand, the way he has been every Thanksgiving of my life.

After pie we drove to the Plaza to see them turn on the lights, the way we did every year when Deanna and I were little. The whole crowd counts down and then every building on the Plaza lights up at once, all the outlines of the towers and the domes in colored bulbs. Grown men go "ooh." I go "ooh." I've seen it twenty times and I still do.

Travis had never been. He grew up in Wichita. He held my hand and watched the lights come on, and then he watched me watching them, and said, "You look like you're six." I'm going to be married to someone who noticed that.

Thankful, this year, for: that. And a job where I'm paid to find the right word, even when I can't.

Sunday, October 26, 1997
Reply Card Enclosed

Wedding planning is a kind of greeting card that never ends. Every decision comes with a verse attached. The invitations alone took three Saturdays. Mom wanted "request the honour of your presence," with the u. Travis wanted "come party with us." I write for a living, so everyone looked at me, and I said I'd think about it, and I'm still thinking about it.

The hall is booked. The church is booked: Saturday, June 20, 1998, two o'clock. My sister is my matron of honor. Travis's brother is his best man. Dad has said exactly one thing about the whole wedding, which was "How much?" and then, after Mom told him, nothing.

Travis has been quiet lately. He says it's work, it's the end of the quarter. I believe him. Accountants have quarters the way the rest of us have weather.

Thursday, September 18, 1997
Returned, With Notes

Every couple of weeks my verses come back from the editors. Some come back with a check mark, which means they'll go forward and maybe, someday, be a card. Most come back with nothing at all, which means no. A few come back with notes in pencil in the margin. I live for the notes. Even the bad ones.

This week's notes, from Barbara, my editor, who has been doing this since before I was born:

"Lovely, but nobody buys a card that makes them cry in the store."
"Too clever. The sender needs to be able to say this out loud."
"Who is this for? Find the person."
"Yes."

One yes, out of forty-one. That's a good week, actually. I took the yes home and put it on the refrigerator like a kid with a gold star.

"Find the person" is the one I keep thinking about. She writes it on about half of what I hand in. Every card is for one person, from one person, and if I can't see them both, it doesn't work.

Saturday, August 16, 1997
With Deepest Sympathy

I spent this whole week on sympathy.

It's the hardest line to write and the most important, and every writer here takes a turn at it. You sit at your desk with a cup of coffee and think about somebody you'll never meet, who has just lost the person they loved most, and who is standing in a drugstore aisle trying to find something to send. They're going to read every card on the rack. They're going to read yours. It had better be good.

My rules, which I made up myself, mostly from getting them wrong:
Don't explain it. Nobody wants it explained.
Don't say you know how they feel.
Don't promise anything you can't know.
Shorter is kinder.

Here is one of mine from this week. It might never be a card. I liked it anyway.

There aren't any right words.
There is only this:
someone is thinking of you,
gently,
today, and for a long time.

On Friday I went home and called my grandma just to hear her voice, and she asked what was wrong, and I said nothing, I just felt like it.

Tuesday, July 22, 1997
Christmas in July

It was ninety-eight degrees in Kansas City today and I spent eight hours writing about snow.

People don't know this, but cards are written way, way ahead. The Christmas cards I wrote today won't be in stores until fall of next year. So right now I'm imagining Christmas 1998, sitting under an air conditioning vent with a sweater over my shoulders because the office is freezing, which actually helps.

Christmas is the easiest season and the hardest. Easy because everybody knows what Christmas is supposed to feel like. Hard because everybody knows what it's supposed to feel like, and there are only so many ways to say "warm," "bright," "home," "peace" and "joy" before you start to feel like a slot machine.

Today's best attempt, I think:

May your house be warm and loud
and full of the people you'd choose,
and may there be pie.

The pie is not going to make it past Barbara. I know that. I put it in anyway.

Monday, June 30, 1997
From Both of Us

There's a whole kind of card that says "from both of us." Anniversary cards from a couple to a couple, sympathy from a family, congratulations from Mr. and Mrs. You'd be surprised how hard they are to write. You have to sound like two people at once, and those two people usually don't talk alike. One of them would sign "Love," and the other one would sign "Take care."

I wrote "from both of us" verses all day today, and then I came home, and Travis had made spaghetti, and I thought: I'm going to be half of a "both of us." I'm going to be one of the people who buys those.

He proposed in March, on a Saturday, on the steps by the fountain at the Plaza, in the rain, because he'd planned it for that day and wasn't going to let the weather change his schedule. That's Travis. He's a CPA. He had the ring in a sandwich bag inside the box so the box wouldn't get wet. I said yes before he finished asking, and then I made him finish asking, because I wanted to hear the whole thing.

Wedding's next June. We're practicing "we." He's better at it than I am.

Sunday, June 15, 1997
Somebody Writes These

Yes. Somebody writes those. That's me.

My name is Yvette, I'm twenty-five, and since last year I've been a writer for a greeting card company here in Kansas City. I won't say which one. If you buy a card for your aunt's birthday this year, there's a small chance I wrote the inside. If it rhymes, it's even money. If it made you cry, I'm sorry, and also, thank you.

I studied English and wanted to be a poet, like everyone. Instead I write about four hundred verses a year that go to strangers, and I love it more than I expected to. It turns out the hard thing is not writing beautifully. The hard thing is writing what someone would say if they knew how.

Today is Father's Day. I bought my dad a card at the drugstore last night, and it's a rule at work that you never buy one of your own, so I stood in the aisle for twenty minutes reading other people's. Dad has worked for the railroad for thirty-three years. He doesn't say much. He liked the card with the fish on it. He read it twice and said, "That's good," which is the most a card has ever gotten out of him.

I'm starting this journal because all day I write feelings for other people, and at night I have a few of my own, and nobody is paying me for those. So here they are. For free.

the newest pages  ·  1998 ›

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