Editor’s Letter – 12/6/17

It blows my mind that this is this year’s penultimate TTV issue. Since it isn’t quite time for year-end reflections, I’ll save that for the next issue. For now, I’m looking ahead.

At the end of the month—I’m stoked to announce here—I’ll marry my partner, Will. Wedding prep has ramped up in the last week—we decided in September to do a December wedding, but it suddenly became go time when we turned the corner from November.

My mother brought to Tulsa a laundry basket full of old family photos for me to select from for a wedding slideshow. Gotta love a good baby pic. There are pictures of my siblings and me playing in the sprinkler, me dressed as Joan of Arc for Halloween, me sleeping on my grandmother’s lap. One of the pictures is of the house I grew up in in Oklahoma City. Built in 1925 and in my family since 1927, it’s a red brick Craftsman-style one-story on a corner in an historic neighborhood. Think Florence Park or White City-type digs. Small but beautiful old homes.

In the photo, the house, yard, driveway, and our family’s old bronze Monte Carlo are covered in what looks like a foot of snow. The photo is nearly as old as I am; the giant oak tree my parents planted when I was born isn’t yet visible. Seeing the photo now, I can’t help but focus on the tree’s absence, knowing what it will grow to be. Fast-forward thirty years—that tree now towers over the house.

The oak looms large in my mind, too, where it stands as a reminder that something beautiful and strong can emerge from humble beginnings. I think of this as encouragement for marriage, for artists growing their craft (read about our cover artist, Sarah Sullivan, and other local makers, here), and for the times in which we live—not even a year into a Trump presidency and already we’re witnessing the resilience and impact of those who oppose it. It makes me think of conversation—a recurrent theme in the past few TTV issues—a dialogue between things. For the tree, it’s the negotiation of space, light, water, wind. For us, it’s conversations on race in America, or how to handle Oklahoma’s opioid crisis and its tangential effects.

As we get ready to close out a year, here’s to looking forward to the next—and even as far as thirty years down the road. Who knows what currently lies latent, what seeds planted now will be towering then.