It’s safe to assume folks in the SmallStack community are here to celebrate the small things. After all, small is beautiful. And whether you’re new to Substack or a seasoned veteran, you've likely become familiar with the many conversations centered around “growing” one’s Substack. But what if growth isn’t necessarily measured by large audiences? Claire’s essay is a beautiful testament to the question: what if growth comes in small packages? In this case, one reader. A reader who gently, yet persistently, pushes her to grow in unexpected ways. SmallStack is pleased to welcome
!How just one exceptional reader changed my life
For Robin Flicker, with gratitude.
In early 2019, I was neither a travel writer nor a regular blogger. I was living in Paris, one of the most exciting cities in the world, but after two decades I was feeling stuck, caught between gray buildings and rising social unrest. I had no desire to chronicle my daily life. Instead, I wrote novels, essays, and flash fiction.
Losing my home and becoming a nomad with my husband Daniel ignited the desire to share my experiences with others. I would frequently post photos and share notes like snapshots. In this way, I kept my friends and Dutch family abreast of such happenings as the mind-opening whiteness of Swiss snow, or my hilarious encounters with scorpions and tarantulas in southern Italy.
I soon gained a following of people with whom I had never interacted, all living vicariously through my adventures.
One of those people was Robin Flicker, a writer, editor, and capital defense lawyer living in New York City. I first noticed her presence on my timeline when I was doing research for a children’s book about Emily Dickinson in Amherst, Massachusetts. One of America’s greatest poets was our first shared love. Robin’s first comment read: “You two are giving me so much joy I feel I should be paying you.”
I hit the like button, but didn’t engage with her. Was I shy? Busy? Uncomfortable with her compliment? Whatever it was, I shouldn’t have taken her kindness for granted. Hers was an exceptionally generous response.
Traveling With Robin
Robin, fortunately, did not give up on me. She kept leaving encouraging comments: “If there were a Facebook caption contest,” she wrote below my photo of the Pretoria fountain in Palermo, “I’d urge you to submit this one, Claire.”
It wasn’t until Daniel and I moved from our haunted palazzo to a tiny apartment in Venice that Robin and I truly began to know each other. We had entire conversations beneath my posts. We discovered other shared loves such as obscure books, ominous clouds, and flowers in all their wildness. Our bond grew faster than the rings of a tree, and we expressed our wish to meet in real life.
When Daniel and I traveled to Morocco in the fall of 2019, Robin’s intense curiosity traveled with us. She peppered me with questions about my posts that I couldn’t answer without doing more research. “Do all mosques have separate entrance gates for women?” she asked. “Is there anything inside a minaret?”
Now, whenever I walked around I imagined Robin with me, looking over my shoulder, pointing at what intrigued her.
Robin apologized for being so demanding. Sometimes it felt as though she’d just returned from another dimension and saw everything anew. I loved her inquisitiveness and anticipated her questions with joy. Now, whenever I walked around, I imagined Robin with me, looking over my shoulder, pointing at what intrigued her. I became more observant and probing, photographing details with her in mind. I got better at talking to strangers. I could be hesitant to make inquiries for myself, but asking for the sake of my most invested reader was another story.
I had a responsibility to fulfill, an extra soul to satisfy. My writing improved.
Around this time, I learned that Robin was physically unable to travel, and that she saw my journey as a way to explore the world. Not by reading a polished travelogue, but by arriving as a novice in an unknown place, like me.
“I can’t wait to see where Claire and Daniel go today!” she would tell her partner in the morning. After posting a story, I would turn to Daniel: “Let’s see what Robin has to say about all this!”
It was amazing. We were living parallel lives.
The Pandemic
By the end of the year, we traveled to New York, then later to Florida to spend Christmas with Daniel’s family. This was a chance for Robin and me to meet. However, her health was so fragile, her doctors urged her to be vigilant. She shouldn’t be with anyone freshly off a plane, especially if they hadn’t been vaccinated in the US against the flu (COVID-19 was yet to become a public threat).
While I roamed the Metropolitan Museum, photographing portraits of strong women, Robin and I sent each other strings of messages, making me feel once again as though she were walking alongside me.
“I believe that there are invisible threads that bind some of us to one another and you and I have a very strong one,” she later wrote.
Robin sat on the back of my bicycle as I toured the abandoned temples of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, by now the fears around a deadly virus were growing.
When we took our nomad life to Asia in February 2020, Robin resumed her travels with me. She joined me in Thailand, on semi-paradisiacal Ko Phi Phi and in Bangkok’s imperial palace. She was there in Chiang Mai as I helplessly witnessed a Thai girl confessing her sorrows to a stone cobra. Her encouragement to write about this episode in more detail helped me to address my shortcomings and enlarged my empathy.
Robin sat on the back of my bicycle as I toured the abandoned temples of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, by now the fears around a deadly virus were growing. Chinese travelers were no longer welcome abroad and Western tourists were afraid of what some ignorantly called the “Asian virus.”
For two weeks, we braved the heat and communed with jungle and stone. It was eerily magical without the crowds.
Daniel and I were in Vietnam when the WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. Should we return to Europe where the disease was spreading like wildfire? Or should we stay in Vietnam where they seemed to have things under control? Robin was one of the first friends I turned to for advice. She was also the person I thought most of when the virus came for New York.
Ultimately, we decided to stay. The future loomed like an unpredictable beast that might turn on us at any moment, but the town I had chosen to wait out the pandemic was as close to ideal as you can get. Hoi An was neither a huge city, nor an isolated village. Rice paddies and vegetable gardens spread all around. There were doctors and emergency services nearby, friendly locals and English-speaking expats ready to help in case of emergency.
Vietnam closed its borders, suspended flights, and enforced a national lockdown lasting several weeks. When the outbreak seemed contained by early summer, the government encouraged everyone to travel domestically in order to support the local economy.
While the rest of the world stayed at home, we (Daniel, Robin, and I) floated in the mystical Ha Long Bay, journeyed to the far North on switchback roads, and descended into the otherworldly caves of Phong Nha.
In the late spring of 2021, on my way to the Netherlands to be with my dying mother, I traveled through New York again and finally met Robin in the flesh. This time, we were both vaccinated against COVID-19. Her health still precarious, we saw each other wearing our face masks in Central Park.
Being in her presence felt like a reunion, our friendship like an undeniable force. But we hadn’t arrived here by fate. We cultivated our bond with patience and deliberation, like gardeners. We read each other’s words, responded with heart, and harvested the fruits of our communication. Together we had made something real. We had inspired love.
She, in her beautiful singularity, made me a better traveler, a better writer, and—dare I say it?—a better person.
Claire Polders grew up in the Netherlands and now roams the world. She’s the author of four novels in Dutch, co-author of one novel for younger readers in English (A Whale in Paris, Simon & Schuster) and many short stories and essays. She’s currently working on her first memoir and a speculative novel. Her flash fiction collection “Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion” is forthcoming from Vine Leaves Press in 2025. Learn more at www.clairepolders.com or sign up for her Substack newsletter Wander, Wonder, Write to follow her on her journeys.
From the small and mighty SmallStack Team, a tremendous thank you to Claire for her beautiful tribute to her friend, and for showing us that growth is just one exceptional reader away.
All stacks great and small,
What a lovely article. Reading: “I believe that there are invisible threads that bind some of us to one another and you and I have a very strong one,” she later wrote'. Made me all teary 🥺 that's so sweet. I love how writing can bring people together like that.
Really moving, and I think more hopeful than I'd imagined. Because Robin is referred to in the past tense throughout and has serious health issues, I was fully expecting a sad ending - but seems not? Is she OK and still connected?