Small stack of letters. Big feelings.
As the Internet grew from infancy to its ‘tween then adult years, I participated in various sites that came to be known as social media. Facebook, where I went inactive on 2016 for several reasons. Twitter, where I did the same in 2022. After all, I’ve had my own site since 2006, starting on LiveJournal before I migrated that content to this site in 2011. I’ve never been hard to find. I’m always open to interacting with people here via comments. I have on occasion made some comments private because people crossed boundaries, whether of privacy (theirs or mine/my family’s) or courtesy. I’m minimally active on Instagram, but that’s tapered off quite a bit, too. I’m here. It’s enough. This site keeps me consistently writing something, or sharing photos. Every day’s like a letter: to myself or anyone who decides to stop by.
Long before there was an Internet, I was an avid correspondent. Old school. Pen to paper. Envelopes to address. Stamps to lick (grateful stamps no longer require that). I mostly hope all those letters were thrown away. I never hesitated to share an opinion or dole out advice (to be fair, I was often asked for advice, and I hadn’t yet developed the wisdom to know people generally want advice that validates what they already want to do). Regardless, I’m sure Current Becky would be exasperated/mortified by Know-It-All Becky. Would roll her eyes at Young Becky’s attempts at drama, wit, or wisdom. As an adult, did you ever see home movies of yourself made when you were a young child and think, Good grief. What an idiot. Show some dignity. I think that’s probably how I’d feel reading old letters I wrote. However, from THIS side of things? When people have told me I should throw away all the letters I received during those years, I resisted, even though I don’t reread them. They’re just there. Part of my history.
One time, I DID purge some letters, and damn if I didn’t start writing a story that could really have benefitted from still having letters written to me by a girl I met at camp when we were like…twelve? Because I was fictionalizing girls around that age from the same time period. It would have been nice to have a record of what occupied our brains, what trendy words or phrases we used, etc.
It made me hold on to the rest of them. Point being, if you wrote me (there were several of you, and you know who you are), I still have your letters. On my Sunday’s paisley image, there are two collections of letters–one near the top, and one closer to the bottom. Today, I’m writing the person who sent me that top stack of letters.
“Dear Correspondent, we were friends in high school. Not like hang out all the time, constantly together friends. We ran with the same group. After I left for college, several of us kept up through letters, including you and me. I think those letters deepened our friendship to the point that when I came home for summer that year, it seemed like we were better friends than maybe we were. It became confusing for me. I made some questionable choices. I was used to friendships where it was okay to make mistakes. Maybe it would become necessary to clear the air. To have hard or uncomfortable conversations. I trusted we had that kind of friendship. What I didn’t expect, as we neared summer’s end, was an abrupt vanishing act and your next message to me: Don’t call me. Don’t write.
DOOR SLAMMED. It was so unexpected that I tried to talk to you anyway. It didn’t happen. Instead, I went back to Tuscaloosa and became like the freaking Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I kept talking to my other friends about this. Speculating endlessly about WHY. As it turned out, that might have been okay. I learned when you’re in pain and confused or mystified, there are people who will listen as long as you need them to, and show you kindness, whereas other people can’t be bothered. I let those last “friendships” die quietly, but if a single one of those people had reached out to me, confused or hurt by my sudden silence, we could have fixed it.
You chose not to fix the silence that fell between us. A few years later, something bad happened to you. I called you to let you know I was thinking about you. You were nice to me and expressed appreciation for my call. (I hoped it wasn’t the painkillers talking.) It was only one conversation, but I was okay with letting it be. At least it was a better ending than the previous one.
Fast forward to 20-plus years later, you called me out of the blue. You left a message. I returned your call. I hoped maybe I’d finally get the answer to WHY? So I asked. You first said you didn’t remember, but later, your recall seemed to be pretty good, just not really the WHY. Again, I was okay with letting it go. We’ve been grownups a long, long time, and moved on with our lives. Now, though we rarely have any contact, and I think we have very different opinions about some things, so what? Tucked in with those letters are some photos, including two of you from that summer. I still catch flashes of that boy who made me laugh. Who made me confused. Who made me feel special until…he didn’t. And I’m okay with that, too.
I’m glad you reached out. Glad we reconnected and continue occasionally to interact. Hope you’re doing well. Still have no plan to read those old letters. Unless I need you for a character I’m writing. Kidding! Maybe.–Becky”
I finished a mystery I was reading on Friday; I have unlimited respect for Louise Penny and her work. Her characters are like friends I rely on for humor, sanity, intelligence, integrity, and compassion. The most recent novel’s written with her usual deft ability to lure readers back to a world they’ve visited for twenty books. The plots can be heart-stopping, sometimes heartbreaking, but there’s comfort that somehow, all will be well in the end. This time was no exception except that The Grey Wolf ventured a little too close to a reality that frequently costs me sleep and peace of mind. Maybe because a lot of the current real world exhibits very little humor, sanity, intelligence, integrity, and compassion.
After finishing Penny’s book, I looked forward to a very different novel for my next selection, the fifth in a historical fantasy/supernatural series, Deborah Harkness’s The Black Bird Oracle. I was racing through it before it came to a natural stopping place at my bedtime. I fell asleep easily, but the last section I’d read made its vivid way into my dreams with its concept of “bottled memories.” Literally, a human (or ghost, or witch, or vampire, etc.) can choose to pour their memories into a bottle and seal them inside before…well, whatever comes next.
I’d pulled three coloring books off the shelf the other day to use for my next coloring pages, and this is the third of those (I’ve already pulled three more). It’s one of my favorites, but because the pages are on front and back, if I want to color a page, I scan it and print it on cardstock so I won’t lose the backing page (because some of the pens I use bleed through, and also, I like putting them in my big sketchbook when they’re finished).
Today’s coloring page was inspired by this photograph of Maxime De La Falaise wearing a fish-tailed striped gown designed by Paquin, as photographed by Cecil Beaton in Vogue, January 1950. I researched her, and wow, what an interesting person she was, and she had an intriguing family, as well. In this age, they’d definitely qualify as influencers, with huge groups of fans/admirers along with plenty of detractors, I’m sure. A current family comes to mind…
It’s a profound relief not to be going through hundreds of posts a day, trying to clean them up. Instead, I’ve given time to leisure activities I enjoy. I started this book yesterday. Lady of Bones is the 24th in Carolyn Haines’s Sarah Booth Delaney series, and I finished it today. Set in and around New Orleans, it’s got a bit of everything, and it was nice to catch up with the Zinnia crew again.
