While I toil away at internal information organization and outward domesticity, a random thought popped into my head.

Once upon a time, I did write regularly.  I had a pen pal to whom I wrote at least once a week, and boyfriends to whom I wrote nearly as often.  I’d forgotten entirely the amount of time I spent writing to them, and in letters – temporally structured writing not unlike blogging.

Was this the start of a blogger, lo those many years ago?  Perhaps.

My pen pal was my cousin; she and I are only months apart in age, were similarly challenged by the unutterable boredom that comes from being banished to the northern woods of Michigan for the entire summer with only one’s mother and siblings for amusement.  We clung to each other for stimulation of the mental and social sort, talking ad nauseum about cliques and social mores and music and boys and boys and boys…we did so over endless hands of gin rummy and cribbage and games of chess or while basking in the sun like sleek young seals.  During the school season when we returned to our respective homes, we’d stay in touch through letters dispatched weekly or more often, depending on the level of aggravation and boredom we experienced at home.  We valued having a person to whom we could vent freely, without judgment; what could I do to help her or she me from our homes nearly five hundred miles apart?  How could we judge, knowing what we knew about the experiences of young girls and not knowing the individual context in which each of us lived?  Letter writing was a method of giving and getting unconditional support in an awkward time.

The letters began when I was thirteen or fourteen and petered out the year I turned sixteen.  We both got our first jobs that summer and had boyfriends who ate up more of our time.  We saw each other very rarely after I turned seventeen; I was already on my own, an adult in the world by that summer.

I had two long distance relationships during my late teen years; I’d moved away from one boyfriend and the other was at college on alternating terms.  The letters were pretty typical drivel between one lovesick puppy to another lovesick puppy.  I’ve no interest in whatever it was I wrote to these boys – it was fueled in part by hormones.

But letters to and from my cousin would be interesting to read now; how did we communicate that teenage angst over acceptance by the larger world, by our intimates?  How did we perceive the world before our naiveté was completely rent in two?  I would love to hear the voices of those two young girls again, to know again the shrinking of innocence and the pain of growing awareness, bitter and sweet.

Would it help my blogging to revisit these letters?  I don’t know. 

Perhaps it already has.

2:03:10 PM    comment []

Big fat hairy rats…I am blog blocked.  The desired subject matter is stuck in my head, refusing to be dislodged like some big tarry wad of postmodernist goop.  I wish I’d never read (and later posted about) that damned post about blog block at Tom Coates’ site; I swear it jinxed me.

Bear with me, gang.  I think I need some time away from the keyboard, either reading more to get my head straight or just being in the moment to clear the static of too much information.

Why don’t you take this opportunity to tell me here in comments how your Thanksgiving holiday transpired?

12:39:23 PM    comment []