My Slow Return to Snail Mail
I miss getting your letters in the mail. Here I sit at 3:48 in the hallway by all the bedrooms, not able to turn the light on to see keys, trying to quietly type you a short note. I would like to pour my heart out, but the click after each key breaks my train of thought. As if I truly had a train of thought in the first place. There is just something more emotionally electrifiying about putting pen to paper and pouring out your heart to a friend than listening to the clickity-clack of the keyboard.
We still have not installed any sort of air-conditioning in this house and if you haven't heard it has been extremely hot here this summer. Well I guess all the western states are pretty much in the same boat. It has been hot though! All summer we think -Where can we get the money for an air conditioner, and all winter we think- When are we going to buy that nice three sided glass fireplace. Tra-la-la life goes on!
I have so much pure crap on my mind -I am so sad and confused -that I really don't have a clue why I should be so sad and confused. Other than the house payments are behind, the utilities only get paid when the shut off notices arrive, and my children are now teenagers. Now that's the scary part! The eighteen is still at home and probably will be for many moons. Not because he is a joy to have around, but because he needs to be reparented by another set of parents, because he lets us know everyday in everyway by everything he does or doesn't do - how bad we fucked up the job! And the other two -have learned from the best how to treat their parents to get what they think they want and need! When the sweet eighteen -tells me to go to hell -which he does often -I simply scream, throw things, do cart wheels and say, "And this isn't it?"
He kind of did and then he kind of didn't graduate from high school. Now after years of doing next to no school work, he thinks we as his parents are obligated to send him to college. Come again! The sixteen -straight A's -seriously. I am not bragging -this girl sits in her room all school year doing homework. I think she feels like she has to be better than her older sibling, but truly it wouldn't take that much work. Little guy, who will be 13 this coming year will go to West High for Junior High. Some Elevated Learning Program. All my children are smarter than the average bear. Don't ask me where they got it from, because God knows that if me or their father were that smart we wouldn't be in the physical, or financial shape we are in!
I am going to click the send button and get this off to you. I was thinking about printing it up and enveloping it off to you, but all the printers are out of ink -SO- I am going to sit down and pour my heart out to you on paper. You may never get it, but know that I start an actual letter to you almost monthly - And it is the thought that counts!
posted by Sally at 3:44 AM
