Loving letters

When lacking ideas for new blog posts, I try to revisit my first ever post, which outlines some of the resolutions I vowed to fulfil this year. I thought I might tackle the resolution to write somebody who lives far away a long letter or a short postcard.
 
It got me thinking about the last letter I had received or indeed written (not counting the letter to my enemy, from a post back in January). The last letter I wrote was to a friend in Germany. I decided I'd write her a letter as I had long ago promised to send her a book I was reading while I was in Berlin. What was interesting was how unnatural it felt to pen an old fashioned letter. I didn't even pen it. I typed it. And, I should also add, it was a boring letter. It had none of the immediacy, and therefore none of the wit of an email. Emails I can do. Emails I'm damn good at.

I was in a relationship about five years ago which was enacted almost entirely over email. We met through a mutual friend, and, being a couple of years younger than me, this lad thought it appropriate to conduct a courtship over email. Then followed a six month romance spanning close to ten emails a day. We were funny, sometimes banal, often entertaining and always flirtatious. We were good over email. What we weren’t so good with was real life. We broke up on a Friday night over some uncomfortable beers in a dire city pub. And I was fine with it, really I was. It was only on Monday when faced with my empty mailbox, did I sob like a child. I missed those emails more than I missed my boyfriend. About a month later, I decided to print out all the emails we'd sent each other and give them to him as a dossier of our romance. It sounds kind of creepy on reflection, but, re-reading that correspondence helped me get over my moderate heartache and revel in some of our cleverer one liners.
 
The email romance was really as close as I have come to writing or receiving love letters in the traditional sense. However, since I am an unashamed sucker for anything sentimental, I did keep most of the correspondence from my first relationship. My first relationship didn't happen until I was 19. By age 21, we were living together. In the bloom of first love, and with the thrill of play acting as adults, we used to write little notes to each other - mostly with domestic instruction, but always led with, or followed by, an endearment.

'I'll get the milk. Love K'.

'Babe, at Dan's place. Love L'.

This was before text messaging made everything so damn easy. And so clinical. Whilst I'm thankful that 'babe' is no longer an acceptable term of affection, it's depressing to think I don't know what my last two boyfriends' handwriting looks like. Whereas, L's handwriting is unmistakeably imprinted in my mind.

My first boyfriend was married recently. I sent him an email to say congratulations. Now, though he doesn't actually live that far away (Sydney), I think I'll write him a short postcard to wish him a happy marriage. Maybe he remembers my handwriting too. Hopefully he's long forgotten that we used to call each other 'babe'.

A misspent youth

My memory is terrible. It is also totally unpredictable in its terribleness. I have no problem remembering that bin night is Tuesday or that I have a haircut booked for Saturday, but, there are sections of my childhood that hardly exist in my memory. To be exact, I don't remember much about my life from birth until around age eleven. It is not as though I had some unspeakable childhood trauma which rendered me memory-less. More likely my childhood was so comfortable and incident free that the few memories I do have are falsely formulated from various 1980s episodes of 'Home and Away'. The photos on my parents' walls certainly suggest I was a bookish though cheerful and carefree kid who enjoyed putting on theatrical productions with my cousins and enthusiastically attending any event which served cake and red cordial. I was extremely happy to pander to this false memory until, last week, when a cold hard reality package landed at my front door.

My parents are moving house and mum has taken the move as an opportunity to exhume the many boxes of my belongings that have been gathering mold in their shed for the past ten years. Many items from my life have been sold off at garage sale - from cabbage patch kids to the entire Sweet Valley High back catalogue, and a once used crepe maker. However, a stash of my school report cards failed to find a willing buyer so, along with handfuls of old photos, they were packaged up and posted to my Melbourne home.

You may imagine my delight at seeing such an exciting time capsule on my doorstep. Here I would be able to show friends pictures of my 'Home and Away' childhood, my straight As and gushing teacher comments. Indeed, the first report I opened from class 3B (dated 5 June 1984) confirmed all my hopes:
'Kristen is a very quiet and conscientious worker, who sets an example for others to follow. She is a pleasure to have in the classroom'.
I was also happy to receive As for 'Interest in literature', 'spelling', 'computation skills' and 'social studies knowledge'. Excellent. Next up, class 4C:

'Kristen is sometimes rather negative and needs encouraging'. Oh dear. My single A that year was relegated to 'Interest in literature'. The rest of the report contained many average Cs and a couple of half-hearted Bs.

By class 6C it seemed I was one step away from juvenile detention:
'Kristen needs to take a more serious approach to her work. She seems to resent authority and could achieve better results with a little more dedication'. The scarce As were restricted to the 'writing' section and my first D was slotted (unsurprisingly) within the 'mathematics' section. 'Physical education' received a 'lacks interest', with a capital 'N' indicating the 'need for improvement'.


What a misapprehension! My entire childhood (as I understood it) was a lie! Surely I was just misunderstood? Perhaps the photos would debunk these (undoubtedly) false claims?

Okay, apparently not. My big brother is looking rather self-satisfied however so I would like to blame my sour expression not on bad temperament, but on a very likely dead arm (which would have been administered by my brother just prior to this photo being taken).

I'm not sure what lesson I've gathered from this trip down my memory's dark lane ways, other than to be a little more discerning about the lies my brain tends to retain. I know this can be said for many things beyond my childhood - the tendency to romanticise past relationships is a prime example. But, if I were to debunk those romantic notions I'd need to uncover the tragic diaries of my youth. And rather than go through that agony, perhaps it's best to live that lie a little longer. With any luck they've already been purchased at mum and dad's latest garage sale.