Pen Pals

 

 

 

"When I was eleven my mother urged me to get a pen pal. "It will be fun," she promised. "You can learn about other countries." I was  nervous because I had been burned by her idea of what was fun and what wasn’t. Like with the opera.  She showed me the two tickets for Aida and added “There might be elephants.” She made a long dress for me to wear which was already embarrassing. I couldn’t understand any of the words and there were no elephants. When we got home Dad wanted to know how it had gone. I heard her say, “Well, we won’t have to do that again.” The next day I went around the house singing songs all wobbly and it made her laugh.

I was eager to please especially when it came to mother and my teachers, so I brought home the name and address of a girl my age in another country. Most of the countries didn’t sound as good as America but I wrote to a girl who was also eleven. I told her I went to school at Kinloch Park in Miami, Florida that my favorite color was blue or sometimes red. My best thing to eat was a fried egg sandwich with mustard. I signed it "Yours truly, Claudette Sutherland. PS If you want to know what it’s like here, we have lots of beaches.” Eventually, I received an airmail letter back written in big printing with a different kind of stamp. "See you can keep the stamp in your memory book,” Momma said. She was practically levitating.

What brought this to mind was a similar experience I had on FB. For the past couple of  years I’ve been following a woman I met only once through family friends. She posted the standard fare about her husband, children and grandchildren. I found myself falling in love with her granddaughter. She and this little girl played pretend games, dressed up and acted out parts on zoom. I saw photos of the special dinners her husband made for her. They walked the beach together, took the train to downtown, shared books. I began to look forward to her postings, ordinary in nature and so relatable. I began to wish I had a marriage like hers, and even better, I began to feel like we were close friends. Momma would have been pleased." -C. Sutherland