in the beginning....

So this idea of setting up a "blog" came to my by way of my sons english teacher! I had been talking about loving to write and that my genre is narrative and in the style of letter writing. Guess I like to talk to PEOPLE to much to relegate my writing to an unknown entity, it helps to know that I am communicating to someone at the time that I write the letter I write instead of writing with the "idea" that someone will eventually read it.

Years ago I began a journalling project. It was in the middle of summer and it had begun to hit me that our oldest son, now 23, was going to be going to high school and in 4 short years, graduating. I hit upon the idea, kind of in the middle of the night, as I lay there talking to our son in my head, that I would write him letters from the present time, until he graduated, presenting them to him as a graduation present. These letters would contain my musings, my wanderings, my hopes and dreams for his future, where he was at that moment in time, his actions and behaviors and where we stood as a family. It was my way of working through the process of letting him go. I wrote my first letter while sitting around a camp fire, looking across the fire at him while he talked about high school with a girl who was already IN high school. I continued to write off and on for the next 4 plus years. When he graduated, I had not managed to translate them into book form, realizing that I was not ready to let him see into my heart the things that were there, he wasn't ready either. Some times we have to know our audience. So, I continued to write, to process, to let go and to learn. The letters became something of a scarcity through times of great stress, when I could find nothing to say that would communicate the depth of my feelings. Then we truly did start to write letters to each other, email style. I began to look back through my old journals, realizing that I had been writing to him or about him from the time I carried him in my womb. Amazing! I already have the book title picked out, just need to get it typed!