The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

Just as a summer afternoon is gorgeous from inside air-conditioning, and you step into the day, hot, muggy, miserable, a postcard of France with all the lavender and sunflowers, I imagine, is far more alluring than the place itself.

I have to think that when it comes to seasons we all get one round. 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.

But 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. Maybe you have a warm supper and stay a night or maybe you stay there a few years.

Daan and I were happy, even though I didn’t know it was happiness at the time because it felt like busyness and exhaustion and financial stress and self-doubt.

I tire of people speaking of seasons as if you can count on three months of winter turning out three months of summer on repeat. It’s not so. 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 think that is what it feels like, with Gill. I’ve spent my life trying to get back to having him even though I know I cannot.

I think most people spend the workdays watching the clock and living for the weekends, but that wasn’t the case for me. There was a lengthy stretch of my life when I lived for the work. It was a haven for me, getting to the office and into the work,

Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle, or, a better metaphor, if dated, the links of a long chain, and even if those links are never put back together, which they will certainly never be, even if they remain for the rest of time dispersed across the earth like the fragile blown seeds of a dying dandelion, isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?

when someone(s) treats you poorly, it is a reflection of him or herself and the misery within the heart of them. It doesn’t help a bit to hear that when you’re young, but later it will.

I loved that Mary Poppins conducted her own life, and the lives of the children Jane and Michael, in such a controlled, even military, manner. This appealed to me terribly, that level of strict control—it seemed very safe. But also, somehow, there was such a great deal of creativity, adventure, color, surprise!

Grief shared, I think, can produce two outcomes. Either you bind yourselves together and hold on for dear life, or you let go and up goes a wall too high to be crossed.

I believe one ought to be precious with communication. Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal.

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,