15. February 8, 2021

On a pleas­ant­ly unsea­son­able day in Feb­ru­ary, fol­low­ing a harsh Jan­u­ary, Rod­dy Har­ris decides to wash his Sub­aru wag­on to remove the destruc­tive salt accu­mu­la­tion from its body. His deci­sion comes amidst con­cerns from his wife, Em, regard­ing his arthri­tis, but Rod­dy, insis­tent on enjoy­ing the rare warm weath­er, pro­ceeds with his plan. As he pre­pares to wash the car, a young woman named Bar­bara Robin­son approach­es him. Dressed in vibrant red attire and hold­ing a slim fold­er close, she inquires after Em, express­ing a desire to dis­cuss some­thing like­ly relat­ed to a Writer’s Work­shop.

The nar­ra­tive delves into the intri­ca­cies and dynam­ics of Rod­dy and Em’s rela­tion­ship, high­light­ing their per­son­al quirks and the affec­tion­ate, albeit stub­born nature of Rod­dy. The con­ver­sa­tion with Bar­bara hints at a poten­tial inter­est in writ­ing, but with an under­ly­ing con­text of chal­lenges faced by the writ­ing com­mu­ni­ty, notably the sus­pen­sion of a work­shop pro­gram due to the pass­ing of Jim Shep­ard and oth­ers’ dis­in­ter­est in the tran­si­tion to remote learning—a dilem­ma likened humor­ous­ly to mak­ing love while wear­ing box­ing gloves by the depart­men­t’s cur­rent writer in res­i­dence, Hen­ry Strat­ton.

Rod­dy per­ceives Bar­bara as an ambi­tious indi­vid­ual aim­ing to hone her writ­ing craft, akin to aspir­ing to the renown of Toni Mor­ri­son or Alice Walk­er. How­ev­er, he leaves it to Em to deliv­er the dis­heart­en­ing news regard­ing the Writer’s Work­shop. Inside their inter­ac­tion lies an intri­cate dance of desire, aspi­ra­tion, and the real­i­ties of prac­ti­cal lim­i­ta­tions, with Rod­dy reflect­ing on the com­plex­i­ties of mem­o­ry, oblig­a­tion, and the con­ti­nu­ity of every­day life through small tasks like car wash­ing. This moment also sub­tly reveals lay­ers of com­mu­ni­ty inter­ac­tion, per­son­al goals, and the impact of exter­nal cir­cum­stances on indi­vid­ual pur­suits and rela­tion­ships, all wrapped in the guise of a sim­ple week­day encounter.