Continued The Correspondent
Sybil Van Antwerp
Sybil,
I was clearing out some things and I found boxes of our letters.
I went back to see if I could find the oldest ones and look at me!
I’d forgotten the circumstances of the first letter you wrote me.
I think we started more regular letters when I moved to CT in high school, the first was when you wrote to me from Camp Cedar Ridge when you went for the month the summer after jr. high—when your mother first had cancer.
I cannot believe I’ve got it. I was so jealous of you that summer off to sleepaway camp while I was babysitting my cousins!
I reread a bunch of the letters, and with mixed feelings.
On one hand, it took me back to that time, and it was a dear feeling.
Not nostalgia, exactly, but something like comfort—maybe some sympathy for who we were then.
On the other hand, seeing things now as an adult through the lens of who we were as children is—there is something painful or uncomfortable about it, and now, knowing how things would go with Margaret’s sickness.
I had forgotten about Felix not speaking after your mother died.
Didn’t that go on for a couple of years?
I can’t believe I’d forgotten that. I’ve enclosed a few.
I am happy to send more. I hope it isn’t too hard reading them.
I’m reading Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck (which is charming—an intellectual cross-country road trip). What are you reading?
Love,
Rosalie