This past week several of us piled into two cars and headed over to the 4Cs conference. It was such an interesting confluence of networks for me. I saw old colleagues and friends from all three of my former institutions as well as interacted with the good people of/from Pitt. I am always so grateful for overlapping networks like this — I only wish I’d been able to have my wonderful friends spend as much time with my new Pitt cohort as I was able to spend with Kyle’s friends who hosted us. These friends are people I now consider new friends — they are some of the most lovely new people I’ve met in a long time. At the end of long days of conferencing we’d grab a few drinks, settle in to long conversations about so many different things. Sometimes we talked about what we heard at the conference, sometimes not. Sometimes we just stared at their two huge dogs with awe. On the last night we drank too much wine and watched the candle wax spill over onto the coffee table. We laughed. I kept accidentally referring to their house as “home” for the week. 

I always try in moments where I am flushed with gratitude and affection for people to affirm and confirm that feeling and acknowledge it. I have several books of blank cards, and postcard collections precisely for this purpose. I lucked out when I went to select a card to send to Kyle’s friends and that exact word, “Acknowledge,” was on one of my postcards designed by Nikki McClure. I’ve blurred out the text with an artsy phone app to protect their privacy, but here’s the back of the postcard: