It’s Words by Winter Wednesday! This week’s episode, My Beloved Penpal, is about my friend Garvin Wong, who many years ago sent me a letter, typed on an ancient manual typewriter, in response to a story of mine he’d heard read aloud on a late night talk radio show. Thus began eighteen years of letters, calls, visits, and many a shared dinner in Chinatown. In the five years since we lost him, I have thought about my friend every day. 
Do you ever semi-wake up and not know where you are, how old you are, who is next to you (or not), what it is you are meant to do, who it is you are meant to be? As I typed that question just now, the words fugue state drifted into my mind. What exactly fugue state means I didn’t know until a second ago, when I looked it up, but it fits the feeling of those half-asleep wakings. 
Yesterday I had a hitch installed on the back of my car. The U-Haul installation place was off a busy frontage road, its entrance blocked by men who came running up to my car, masks askew, shouting at me in Spanish, a language I (still) don’t speak, holding up fingers —one? two? and pushing each other: Me! Me! No, me! 
When my kids were little and nothing else worked I used to resort to the dreaded counting threat. I’m going to count to ten. One. Two. Three. Why this worked I don’t really know, but I never had to count past three. Welcome to Words by Winter!
Oh my friends, my brand-new podcast, Words by Winter, is live as of this morning. This is a labor of love, something I’ve been working on for quite a while now, an offering to anyone and everyone working their way through a tough time. Each brief episode contains a story or conversation, along with a poem to help connect us all. It’s available wherever you listen to your podcasts. Check out one of the first episodes, and subscribe if you like.
Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.
Whoever you are, whatever age, whatever place in life, you can send a voice memo via email to wordsbywinterpodcast@gmail.com, or write me at the same address.
Words by Winter is available wherever you listen to your podcasts. Each brief episode includes a story or conversation, along with a poem. Check out the intro episode here, and subscribe if you like what you hear.
Words by Winter credits
Creator and host: Alison McGhee.
Theme music composed and performed by Dylan Perese, on Instagram @dylan.field,perese.
Additional music composed and performed by Kelly Krebs, who can be reached at kellykrebsmusic@gmail.com and soundcloud.com/kellykrebs.
Poems read by writer and voice artist Luke O’Brien, who can be reached via email.
Artwork by Mark Garry.
Additional occasional readings performed by Matthew Colfax and Devon O’Brien.
Copyright permission has been granted for all poems used in this podcast with the exception of those already in the public domain.
On a moonless night a long time ago, just off the highway, I leaned against a cinder block wall with a payphone pressed to my ear. The only light came from passing cars and a bug-stained fluorescent bulb mounted above the phone. The voice on the other end was bored, disinterested. Across the miles I felt the connection diminishing, no, diminished, no, gone. 
Yesterday I sat at the table all day and labored through every paragraph of every page of a forthcoming novel, trying for the many-eth time to get the timeline perfect, and then I got up this morning and did it again. If Micah disappears on Wednesday night and Sesame starts looking for him on Thursday morning and winter break is a week from Friday and the weekends don’t count then how many days will it take for blah blah blah blah blah. Scratch paper and pen to my right, calendar to my left, stuck in the middle with my own inadequacy. 
One of my daughters had a friend when she was little, a friend the rest of us couldn’t see. He had a strange name which we all loved. Sometimes we would check in on him. “He’s asleep,” was the most common answer. Sometimes “He’s visiting his grandma,” or even “He went away.” Once, disturbingly, “he died.”
Alison McGhee 