The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

We are born and grow through childhood in spring. We live those glorious, lively, interesting years of our twenties, thirties, forties in summer. We settle into ourselves in autumn, that cool but not yet cold time, rich and aromatic. And in winter we age (brutally) and die.

I think of life rather like a long road we walk in one direction. By and large a lonesome walk out in the wildness of hills and wind. Mountains. Snow. And sometimes there is someone to come along and walk with you for a stretch, and sometimes (this is what I’m getting to) sometimes you see in the distance some lights and it heartens you, the lone house or maybe a village and you come into the warmth of that stopover and go inside.

The stretches on the high, windblown road are far commoner than the stopovers in comfort, and aren’t we always trying to get back to the happier times?

I believe one ought to be precious with communication. Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal. Sometimes, Caroline, the easiest inroad is to begin with a thank you, for a gift or a kindness or a letter, you know, and then take it from there. Answer every question they’ve asked, and ask your own, and you will have created a never-ending circuit of curiosity and learning.

I despise the notion of Texas with every atom in my being, a hot, barren wasteland of tumbleweed and people carrying guns and wearing cowboy boots,

we are thirty in our hearts, before all the disappointment, all the ways it turned out to be so much more painful than we thought it would be, but then again, it has also been magic.