The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

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.

and the only black anything I have anymore is a dress I was probably wearing in the 1990s, which dips down to the uppermost part of what used to be my cleavage, but which now resembles the skin of a raw plucked chicken.

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?

The WRITTEN WORD, Mr. Watts. The written word in black and white. It is letters. It is books. It is law. It’s all the same.

I blamed you, but you were not at fault. Terrible accidents happen all the time to many, many people. The grief that must fill the world is incomprehensible. Our small dose felt as large as the sun, didn’t it?

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.

(This is the trouble with being only five foot one inch, and it has always been the trouble, but you know I am tall on the inside.)

Now, of course I always welcome your thoughts on every matter, but in this case, I beg you to tread thoughtfully because I fear I’m so perplexed by the matter that anything you say might make tracks I’d be unable to erase.

When you were born I was terrified. With the two boys I felt I was in a position I could manage—they seemed like foreign objects—but then you came out, a girl. I was afraid to have a girl because what if I couldn’t understand you? I’d never found a way to fit into the world, not really, and what if I didn’t know how to be a mother to you? I was afraid, and that’s the whole thing. I was afraid all the time of losing something or ruining something, and then I did.

Grief (the biggest grief in the world) is like—What? What is it that happens to a person? I’ve always felt it is like a scream living inside me. It’s gotten a bit softer over time, but it’s never gone. I walk around the house or dig in the garden or wander the grocery store or sit at my desk and there’s a screaming inside my head like an air horn that warns of war.

I know you think of me as your mother only, but please remember, inside I am also just a girl.

I am an old woman and my life has been some strange balance of miraculous and mundane. This time, when I read your book again, prepared for the feelings I had felt before, I was surprised utterly.

I guess there’s no bottom to a person, but I feel you have left fewer stones unturned than anyone else who’s ever passed through, and it’s taken me some time to recognize how knowing you has been like coming in from the cold, lonely road to find a warm fire and a table laid, so thank you for that, Theodore.

said—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.