Hello my love,
I’ve just been baking. Before I was baking, I felt like I had a traffic jam in my head. Part of why I was baking was because I needed an excuse to go to the shop so that I could move – nothing works for a snarl up like moving. Part of why I’m writing now is to ease the congestion.
There was an ant in the syrup I was making from sugar and butter, but I only realised it once it was too late to save. I tried to get it out, but it resisted the spoon. Then I remembered you saying that you no longer bothered with the dead ants floating in your Rooibos from the ones that infiltrated the honey and died there, sweetly. So I left the ant, and one of us will consume an expired ant with their pecan nut slice later.
Thanks for your service, Ant. I’ll eat prayerfully.
Do you miss Rooibos yet?
Which brings me a little closer to an explanation for what’s going on here. You’re there and I’m here and yes, I know we can WhatsApp and Facetime, but those are unsatisfying replacements for our rambling conversations.
Remember last year, when I had that epic disaster with all my saved letters, and I spent weeks trying to dry them out using Dassie’s huge, heavy dehumidifier which he and Sam had to wrangle up the stairs? I was convinced I was going to have to pay for someone’s physio afterwards. I’ve been thinking about letters a lot since then.
There’s indulgent nostalgia – which I indulge in privately, mostly, because who cares about the feeling I get when I see a chocolate wrapper from my childhood – and then there’s sadness for things that have passed that had value. Letters had value. A whole chain of value, in fact. Imagine opening a box outside your house and seeing in it an envelope that was held in the hands of someone you love, knowing that some microscopic biological trace of them is as sunk into the paper as the ink is that they used. There’s this physical connection across time and space that feels magical in a way that technological communication cannot have.
Saving my letters from the water was an intense experience also because of the very strong, old, familiar visual ringing of my loved ones’ respective, very distinctive, handwritings in some chamber in my heart. An optic cue for remembering, and for feeling remembered. To be seen, I think, is one of the most profound human experiences. To receive a long, loving, vulnerable, funny letter from a friend far away is to be seen across a distance, to be held in their mind as an image of something valued. I received letters while I was travelling – or they were travelling – most regularly from four friends. Thirty years on, all four of them are still in my life and our bonds are strong. Experiences bound us, but the words that (literally) flew across the world, glued us solidly, I think.
There is a particular flavour of communication that happens in a long letter from far away, that can’t be captured in calls or texts. A kind of intimacy, a nearness that has to do with being granted access to thoughts that occupy the mind of someone you care about.
Also, where texts can be quick touchpoints and are often organisational and to the point, conversation is like trying to fold a fitted sheet: disorderly, chaotic and it can be a bit silly, without having to be embarrassed about itself. And because good conversation often requires intimacy and vulnerability, it is – for me – also low-stakes. It doesn’t have to declare a stance or be sure of anything. It doesn’t have to commit to a course of action, a policy, or a direction. It doesn’t have to declare and know.
For the past year, as we’ve anticipated your leaving, I’ve made jokes about how I will turn instantly old when you leave because you’re my final connection to What Young People Think. You’ve made jokes about how you wish I could send you off with a book of Mom Hacks.
So, in the absence of free-flowing conversation, I’ve decided to write you letters, my love. Just one a month. I’m not sure what will be in them, but I suppose the stuff we usually chat about when we’re together, and the information that comes up organically between people who see one another often: recipes, songs, thoughts, memories, things we’ve read, conversations we’ve had with others.
I thought I’d do this for you, while you’re gone. Ramble and chat. And tell you what’s been occupying me. I’ll send letters that contain whatever they contain and be as long or as short as they are. And there’ll be no expectation of reciprocation.
I’ll send the first one on Monday. It’ll be my Valentine’s gift to you: a love letter.
Love,
Kowski