Living in the past

So, hello! It must be the autumn, time to stay indoors, and maybe write a few blog posts again…

I’ll do a wee update blog in a bit, for anyone particularly concerned with chronology and Frydman activities in the last few months.  For now, I’ll start with what’s been on my mind this week:

Started going through a whole collection of cards, birthday cards, postcards, letters, you name it – some recent, some going way back.  I knew that my mum was good at sending cards of all kinds, but starting to stack them all up…really brought home her ongoing care towards me.

At this point, you may be wondering why I keep all this stuff anyway.  But don’t we love rediscovering ‘treasures’ of various kinds from the past? Don’t we love receiving things through the post? According to a short piece in the Saturday Times recently (fount of a certain amount of my knowledge, as regular readers will know), there’s something of a renaissance going on in letter writing.

Email, texts, instant messaging, all good – but what happens when you turn off the device? I speak as one whose courtship partly started online (yes, there was a key email from Dan, and a lot more emails between us after that), but what I love to look back at is the cards and letters he sent me during our long first year apart, when I was teaching in Poland.

So far, so good, on the warm fuzzy feelings front.  What feels stranger, and I’m still thinking over, is the potential for revisionist history when going back through all the letters.  Friendship didn’t work out or only lasted for a time? Do I get rid of the letters they sent, and alter the history between us, as it were, or keep them but know I won’t necessarily read them again?

In other cases, there are friendships that have drifted – but I still think of the other person happily.  The letter is a link with them – worth hanging onto a bit longer? And in a few cases, the other person has even taken the time to say that what you did, at a particular time, helped them or meant something to them.  That thing may be long forgotten to them now – but it’s good to be reminded that you can help at points, even in a small way.

And in some situations, musing over a relationship that is not so good just now, the cards and letters remind me of another person’s care and attention, maybe over a long period of time.  Is it not worth giving it another go?

I’m still working through the paper – and my reactions.  I’m reminded of a quote I’ve used before, but this time to focus on another part of the quote:

“Sometimes the poet says to hell with words//And longs to dig ditches

She writes of her longing, and you, who are her friends, write back.”