Valentine's Day - almost.
I think I am going to buy J a wheelbarrow for Valentine's Day. I'm gonna need it when I start working in the garden in a week or so....
Yesterday at lunch I had to make a quick drive home to pick up Z's class Valentine's that he had forgotten to take with him to school that morning. Since school is in intersession next week the class Valentine's Day parties were going on yesterday.
The Valentine's Day cards were homemade, because we hadn't had a chance to buy the massproduced cards from the store. Simple cards, really. A roll of left over Christmas wrapping paper with hearts and candy canes >> cut out the hearts >> glue onto little cards cut from the white bristol stock >> sign and you're done.
As I pulled out of the driveway at home, after fetching the left-behind cards, I also checked the mailbox. Bill, bill, bill, and a hand written (I know that handwriting!) thicker-than-a-bill envelope with the logo of Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the upper left corner...
Yesterday at lunch I had to make a quick drive home to pick up Z's class Valentine's that he had forgotten to take with him to school that morning. Since school is in intersession next week the class Valentine's Day parties were going on yesterday.
The Valentine's Day cards were homemade, because we hadn't had a chance to buy the massproduced cards from the store. Simple cards, really. A roll of left over Christmas wrapping paper with hearts and candy canes >> cut out the hearts >> glue onto little cards cut from the white bristol stock >> sign and you're done.
As I pulled out of the driveway at home, after fetching the left-behind cards, I also checked the mailbox. Bill, bill, bill, and a hand written (I know that handwriting!) thicker-than-a-bill envelope with the logo of Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the upper left corner...
It was an actual letter. A real letter.
A handwritten letter. A rare and treasured thing in itself, and to make this one even more precious, it was from my friend Robin. We were the best of friends in highschool. While she was on the science and biology side of school I was in the art department, but somewhere in English we met up. She was the first person I knew who got a CD player in her car and the first song I heard her play on it, really loudly, was Deep Purple's Perfect Strangers. Her parents had a 1984 mac in their living room on which I drew a line drawing of a fetus with the drawing program. (I don't know why a fetus - I think I was doodling something and maybe it sorta looked like the image of a fetus seen from the side, I dunno.)
Right now I have typed and erased about five times my next sentence. I am remembering things, and writing them down, erasing, because I don't know where to begin or how to write about them. Random memories. U2 concert in Austin 1987. Those stacks of hardback journals we both wrote fervently. I ended up tossing all of mine in a big apartment complex dumpster the summer after I graduated from college. All of them. One of those things. Now I wish I could read them again sometimes, but I don't wish I still had them. Ya' know. I remember English class. Robin actually read the books. I got the Cliff Notes. (But I am reading those books now, so it all comes full circle.) I remember her 18th birthday party... maybe it was her 17th? My first wine coolers! In the safety of parent supervised confines of course. She went pre-med in college, I grabbed a load of art classes aimed toward graphic design. Now we have families and work and homes and live a thousand miles apart.
Right now I have typed and erased about five times my next sentence. I am remembering things, and writing them down, erasing, because I don't know where to begin or how to write about them. Random memories. U2 concert in Austin 1987. Those stacks of hardback journals we both wrote fervently. I ended up tossing all of mine in a big apartment complex dumpster the summer after I graduated from college. All of them. One of those things. Now I wish I could read them again sometimes, but I don't wish I still had them. Ya' know. I remember English class. Robin actually read the books. I got the Cliff Notes. (But I am reading those books now, so it all comes full circle.) I remember her 18th birthday party... maybe it was her 17th? My first wine coolers! In the safety of parent supervised confines of course. She went pre-med in college, I grabbed a load of art classes aimed toward graphic design. Now we have families and work and homes and live a thousand miles apart.
As I was reading her letter, on my way to the school with Z's valentines, careful to avoid wrecking my car, the CD in my car stereo was serendipitously playing Led Zeppelin's Ten Years Gone.
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