Ann Patchett

The ability to really listen to another person is an essential skill for a novelist.

It's an essential skill for all human beings.

shines the light that disrupts the dark isolation so many people find themselves in.

I had just turned 22 when I finished my first semester of graduate school at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

I was also taking classes in the printmaking program, ambitious, young, art-loving thing that I was.

I had flown from Iowa City to Chicago, O'Hare, where I'd change planes and go home to Nashville for Christmas.

I had my Hermes 3000 typewriter with me, technically portable at 14 pounds, because I wrote stories.

I also had a shoulder bag of zinc plates, which I planned to engrave over the break.

Have you ever traveled with a bag of zinc plates?

They're a lot heavier than a typewriter.

In O'Hare, I got very, very lost.

I put my typewriter down, stood there lopsided looking at my ticket when a young man walked up and asked me if I needed help.

Time changes memory, but I remember him clearly.

He had on khaki pants and a pink Oxford shirt.

He had straight, sandy blonde hair and wire-rimmed glasses.

He looked like the young John Denver.

I gave him my ticket.

You are really lost, he said.

And then he took my extraordinarily heavy bag from my shoulder and the typewriter from my hand and said he would walk me to my gate.

Side note.