Home

Yes I am still in town. San Francisco is still the last line on my return address label. Sometimes one before last when USA is there. I still get letters and bills and lots and lots of junk-mail--the kind that comes on cheap newsprint paper. On Friday I got two Thank You cards in the mail and it warmed my heart: who sends handwritten notes anymore? They were very pretty. One had on a Japanese inspired plum tree on it, lightly embossed into the card. The other came on a thick and lush paper--the kind that feels like it would turn into a soggy brick if you put it in water. I put the cards on my mantel to remind me of all things simple and lovely. All things I will one day want to go back to.

When I was little and just starting to write, I wrote a letter to my brother who was living in New York. New York seemed very big to me and very far away. I imagined it a magical country populated by guerrillas and apes and celebrities who command over glossy sky rises and a river. In addition to my letter, I also made a drawing for him: feathery Crayola-red outline of a girl (me) and a boy (him) holding hands. I folded my letter and the drawing into an envelope I had pulled out of the neatly organized stack of stationary my father kept on his desk, reached on my tippy-toes for the address book my mom kept by the phone and then sat on the floor and carefully copied my brother's address onto the envelope in that same Crayola red. When I was done I licked the bitter edge of the envelope's flap and sealed it. On my way to school the following day, I stopped at the post office and dropped the letter in the blue box, making sure to wave the little door once and twice and three times until for sure the letter was inside the box.

For the coming days and weeks after I sent the letter, every time my brother called, I asked him if he had any special news for me. He would tell me of the teachers he has, of the friends he made at school, of plays he saw--but nothing of my letter.

A long time after--it was almost Christmas--I was in bed reading under the covers with my lamp�when I heard my mother laughing out loud. She called my dad and he too started laughing. Wh-Hah-Ha-ha, he laughed. Or more like roared. I heard their voices near my bedroom door, some whispers, laughter again. I put my lamp back on the bedside table and got out of bed--my feet touching the inside seams of my footsies.

"Mommy" I said through the closed door. "What's going on?"

I was nearly smacked by the doorknob�when they opened the door in a wide swing. My dad picked me up and spun me in the air.

"Have you been doing any special projects lately?" my dad asked.

"What?" My little brain started to scan through all the things I wasn't supposed to do. I hadn't dissected warms in a while. I didn't take money anymore from my mother's purse, and I didn't let the dog in when they were out of the house. I swear. Except once. When it was cold and rainy outside and I thought she would much prefer to stay with me until my parents came back from the theater.

"Your brother called" said my mom as she opened her arms around my dad and I to slow down my spinning. "Do you remember sending him a letter?"

"Ohhhh" I said and felt my cheeks getting hot, feeling like I was caught but not sure�at what.

"It was a very nice thing to do." Said my mom. "He was very happy to get your letter and your drawing. He said it was the best letter ever."

"Really?" I looked up at her, my chest starting to fill with pride.

"Really." She said. "It was very nice."

That night I was allowed to watch TV until late: I sat in my dad's lap on the sofa next to my mom--just fitting in the contour of his body like a little half moon, one leg stretched over my mom's lap. She held my feet in her hands and every so often, rubbed the bottoms of my pajama footsies to keep them warm.

Years later, when I visited my brother in NY for the first time, I saw the drawing I had made for him hanging framed in his above his desk in his Upper West apartment. Next to it, inside the frame, was the envelope--the first two lines of his address written in my little girl's writing, stretching across the envelope. There was no Country, there was no stamp, and for return address, there was only my name and country.  I remember staring at the envelope perplexed.

"Is this what I sent you?" I asked.

"Yes." He said and laughed. "Did mom ever tell you the story?" I shook my head no. "Well. One day I'm coming back from school and my roommate greets me with this letter in his hand. 'Someone's looking for you' he said. It came on such a perfect day--I had been missing home like crazy and that was a perfect hello."

I looked at my drawing, hanging frozen in its frame, and wondered how something so simple--so otherwise disposable--led to such�precious moments. It connected us and remains an anchor that holds us together whenever we're too scattered. "Remember when..." my brother would start and we would all laugh. My mom would tell of my dad spinning me in the air ("she was terrified! she'd say. "No I wasn't!" I would say back), my dad would tell about "God only knows how she didn't burn down the house with that lamp under her blanket" and my sister would say I was always the artist and there's the proof. The words never mattered--it was the feeling of coming closer, circling around those moments, those conversations, that bound us before we knew what journeys await us, how far they'll take us, and if we'll ever be back home.

Today, San Francisco is still my home despite the many stamps in my passport and the piling mail inside my door. I hope to write more thank you notes this coming year, to grow some plants again, to talk with my brother from a landline, to go back to drawing, to reading, to writing, and to creating simple things again that paint a picture of home.

Yours truly,

Datingirl