Lettering

This year, I also made the resolution to do a better job of sending cards and letters. Ideally, I'll send them out for birthdays and anniversaries and baby births, but on a more practical (and frankly, a more attainable) level, I just want to keep up with sending out Thank you cards after holidays and to keep up writing to the "pen pals" I already have.
My current pen pal is my roommate from college. She is now living in a tiny studio apartment in Houston, doing her residency at Baylor. I love getting her letters, as it opens up my eyes to a side of life I don't consider often. On the sobering side, her first letter of this year read, "My world last month consisted of pediatric oncology. It's not exactly a 'lift your spirits' type of rotation when you go from room to room telling families that their formally perfect child has conver and needs surgery." On the brighter side, she wrote, "Only exciting news for me was the 'pseudo date' I went on earlier this week," and she went on to detail the expectation-free evening she spent with a fellow resident. Ahhh, the life. (Have I mentioned that's another one of my New Year's resolutions? One meaningless date this year. I'm pretty excited to try that out. I've always been a relationship girl. Never an "expectation free" kind of girl. I'm excited about trying something new...) So, in any case, I'm blessed and happy to have her sending me letters once a month.
So, in addition to writing to her, I'm going to start a one-sided pen palship with someone else. This Sri Lankan woman I met in France. She was, in fact, one of my French students. When I was in the Paris area, I tutored her every Monday, and it's been hard to not see her anymore. When I left, I told her I would return in the winter after the wedding, and we would continue the classes.
After the cancelled wedding, I had written and written to her, but she had never responded. However, just a week ago, I got a Christmas card in the mail from her telling me that she had moved and wondered when I was returning to Paris. "When we start class?" she wrote in her butchered English. So, today, after writing my Pen Pal 1, I wrote to Pen Pal 2. I carefully explained that S no longer wanted to marry, and I explained that I wasn't returning but that I would love to keep in contact through letters. She struggles to write in French or English, so I'm not sure how frequent her letters will be, but starting today, I will try to keep the pipes of communication open.
And now, having written, addressed, and stamped two letters, I sit back in my chair and breathe a sigh of relief.
I'm in contact with people.
I'm less of a hermit.
I'm even a little cosmopolitain with my out-ot-town friends.
So, you know what? That's something. There you go, 2011.
Watch me wrestle my way back into real life.