Sending the Dream Away

Sending the Dream Away

The postage for the manuscript was over seven dollars: a cover letter, a synopsis and the allowed thirty pages of text. And the SASE. This buys transport for dreams away from my post office to New York and home again. Not hopes and dreams; just dreams. The hope stays with me.

A half hour after posting I check my mail box and laugh a single Ha, amused that some space in my heart is already looking for reply. And so it is every day after, from the impossible first week through the implausible second week and into the vaguely possible third week, waiting to see my own handwriting on the full manila package. There is the daily hot-chill, loose-tight gut as I walk to the mail box. Nothing. Of course.

And just as well. The twenty-four hours between postal drops is profitable for feeding hope. Without the almost certain rejection, I can read, in my mind, the perfect letter on its way to me. Phrases like, “You were cruel to send only the first thirty pages. Please, please send the rest by overnight mail.” Or just, “Yes!” hand written on expensive, engraved corporate letterhead.

The hope. The unrealized potential. The tension of the foreplay of the waiting for the dream to return. Between the sending and the reply, all potential is possible. The contract. The galleys. The cover. The book signing (a mahogany desk? A smooth, worn pine deal table? A card table?) Everything that could be, could be. The reviews. Oprah. Why not?

In the time before reply, the dream, in-transit, grows and the dream feeds the hope that stayed behind. Without the boiler-plate “Dear Contributor” the ever possible “Yes” remains.

And then the manila envelope comes back and with it the manuscript and the synopsis and clipped to the upper right corner, the five by eight inch, mint green “Dear Contributor...” And then, the next day, with fresh envelopes and fresh postage, the dream is again sent flying. And the hope stays home. And Oprah is real again.