Dear Grapevine

Next Stop: Grapevine

A number of years ago, I was reading a story in Grapevine that started out, “I grew up in a small New England town …” As the story unfolded, it seemed so familiar. My childhood playmate came to mind. The signature at the end was the correct name and last initial, but this fellow lived in Florida, oddly enough, just a few miles from where my family had moved when we left New England 50 years ago. A friend suggested I do a computer search on the writer and sure enough, he had posted to a recovery site in our old hometown, and his email address came up on the web! I wrote to him and told him I was also in recovery and found him through his Grapevine story. We have been corresponding ever since. Turns out we had gotten sober only months apart and we both were newsletter editors—he for his intergroup, me for my district—so we started sharing articles and proofing each other’s work.