Thursday I received an e-mail from the kindest art director I’ve interacted with to date (and the first, if I’m being honest), letting me know the edition was out. The edition in which they’d be running another cover story on the flood, this time from an urban-planning perspective. Looking back, I can totally see how I missed it: “we are considering, with your permission, using your photograph as the cover of the issue.” Somehow that translated, “you sent us a photo in early May after the flood which we chose not to use in a reader-submission edition, and we still have this image of yours that we’re thinking we might, I don’t know, maybe use somewhere in the article that also happens to be the cover story of this upcoming edition.” Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.

So I sat there looking at this e-mail with a jpg attached of the cover thinking, “that is the oddest layout for an article image I have ever seen.”

And then it hit me.

And then I freaked out.

And I haven’t stopped.

And I won’t.

Because as much as I’d love to hide my enthusiasm, saving my “I’m such a professional this doesn’t even faze me” game face and pride, I just can’t.

For eight years I’ve lived in this city, a city I came to out of a drive for creative expression, and here I am with a photo I took in the neighborhood of our first home sitting on the cover of a magazine I have picked up and read countless times in my residency here. That’s a big deal to me, and the first time I’ve ever been published in print.

As much as that’s been cause for elation the last couple of days, that hasn’t been the best part. Instead, it was surprising my not-yet-met neighbor whose whom lies in the background of this image. I dropped by on Friday evening to introduce myself and drop off a copy. That night, you’d have thought I was a representative from Publisher’s Clearing House. I won’t ever forget the look of realization that washed over Jenny’s face as she surveyed the cover of a magazine that at first seemed like such an odd delivery. Soon her husband and kids joined her on the front step and marveled at what a place so common to them looked like to the general public, thousands of casual readers who’d never know the lives who call that brick ranch house with the woody station wagon in the driveway (now, sadly, dead) home.

But I do, now, and I’m so grateful for that and for the safety and well-being of the countless other lives affected by the flood.

And okay, maybe also for the chance, if only for the seven days it sits on shelves, to appreciate something I was a part of doing being seen this way.