Dear Future Letter Writing Friend,
It all started when I was a little girl. I was meant to be a writer. Why else did my parents put up with my two, three, four letter or more a day habit? I wrote and wrote and wrote. Sometimes I didn’t even wait for a reply. I just wrote some more.
I was a part of slam book swaps where young girls would send packets of homemade booklets with other girls addresses. You would pick one or two names, write a letter, and see if they write back. When my family went camping I would meet new friends and write them letters. In the early days of the internet I would write long emails nightly, telling my friends what I was up to that day. I even read books comprised of, you got it, letters.
The only friendship break up (non-romantic) with me was a pen pal. We shared the same first name. I think it was her sophomore year at Brandeis University and she wrote to me in California saying she just didn’t have time to write anymore. She was so graceful about it. I have never forgotten her.
I love writing letters.
I love corresponding with people.
I even collect and read letters from eighty years ago written and sent to people I never knew. I am that person who actually enjoys looking at travel photos. I will point to the photos and say, “Tell me about her!” or “Where is this? Oh, this place looks so inviting!”
In case you think, “Hey, a random snail mail letter sounds interesting!” I thought I would tell you a few unique things about me.
I have a brownspot in the top left quadrant of my left blue eye.
I have four brothers and a sister. I lost my brother immediately below me five years ago. I was completely unprepared for that grief.
I am a creative life coach. I love performing my own poetry, I act in plays locally and have done some independent films and a couple music videos. I am not doing any of that now because I had melanoma last Fall and am waiting for my facial scar to heal a bit more. So I have more time to write to people I have never met. I may include a haiku or a photo, since I love both of those activities as well. I may include a photo collage of a favorite author as I love literature, especially not very well known literature written by women.
Sometimes I write poetry in the sand, like on this day, at the beach.
I may write about my children. I have three children, two girls and a boy. My eldest daughter attends Smith College in Massachusetts. My middle daughter is a sophomore in high school. They are very different and very much alike and I call myself their rough drafts. It is like I was sliced into pieces and distributed to my daughters. They are unlike but each is like me in her own way. Talk about humbling! My son is eleven and has autism. He is mainstreamed in school and quite smart.
I've been known to write poetry on the sidewalks of San Francisco. Those are my two children behind my shoulder. They were watching a cable car. Seriously
I grew up in Glen Ridge, New Jersey and Dana Point, California. Now I live in Bakersfield, California. It isn’t like Los Angeles or San Francisco or San Diego here. It is more like Oklahoma plunked into the middle of the state. No beach. No mountains. We do, however, have the Kern River and the largest crop of carrots than you will find anywhere else.
So there you have it.
If you would like a letter, visit my Postable and add your address.
I am planning to sign off here and write a letter to each of the people who added their names today. That would be… two so far.
With Joyful Anticipation,
Julie
Writing beneath a tulip magnolia tree. They bloom in Bakersfield in February!
