A visit to a post office

I was talking over the weekend to a very good friend who lives in rural backwater Virginia, a half hour’s drive from Charlottesville. Rachel and her husband Colin (not their real names, of course) have one of the nicest homes of any of our friends. Their house sits on a plateau at the base of a mountain and looks out over a mountain range in the distance. It’s beautiful and serene and I love being there because I always feel at peace. We may take the children there for spring break this year.

I met Rachel (still not her real name) while I was in college, so we have known each other for years. For more than 20 years she worked as a reporter and then as an editor at one of the top newspapers in the country before she and hubby moved to Virginia. She is a wonderful writer and perhaps the most well-read person I know. But she does not read John Grisham. She thinks little of his writing.

So it was a bit ironic last Friday when she went to her post office in rural backwater Virginia to pick up her mail and bumped into Grisham who was there picking up his mail. (I wondered whether he was there to pick up royalty checks from his latest novel, “The Appeal,” which, as it turns out, isn’t destined to be one of my favorites.) Recognizing him, she said hello. Then she recognized that he wouldn’t recognize her because he is a celeb and she isn’t. But he was polite nonetheless.

What she did not do was go “hack, hack, hack” as she pretended to cough as Colin (still not his real name) suggested she should have done. She also didn’t wrestle him to the ground and badger him about her having a longtime friend (me) who had just finished his first novel called “Fighting Chaos” and needed an agent. That's what I wished she had done.

But since she didn’t, I guess when we next go visit Rachel and Colin, I will just have to hang out at the local post office all the time. Just my luck, I’d probably see Mary Chapin Carpenter instead. She also lives in the area.

Thanks for reading and don’t give up on writing.