Happy Friday! How are you back home? It’s becoming a little warmer here, which is a great relief. I hope the daffodils in our backyard have sprung up, I always liked them. Are you doing well?
I’m just doing as well as I can. I’m tired of late and homesick. I was always more eager to run off than you were, because you wanted the whole family to be together, and I wanted to go off on adventures. But I really was just meant for home and my own place. I don’t think Eugene would accept me as part of its fold anymore. I would always be afraid walking around. But at least there is my town now. It is different but still feels like another home. But there is nothing like the place I lost. I sometimes wonder how Eugene feels to you now. It can’t be the same. Does it feel colder? More secretive? More frightening? Perhaps I’m just projecting. I wish I had a way into your head. You have free reign of mine, at least.
I think someday I will save up my own money and just go back to Eugene to visit old places. I know some are gone now; the Townsend’s has closed since I was last there, I think, in 2019. The ghost of my hometown will stand until I do. Just like how I write to a nine year old every week instead of a seventeen year old. How can I lament that again in a way that will bare it most truthfully? A way to make everyone feel it? I can’t find the perfect aphorism that will make our family, our friends believe me. Or at least the ghosts I remember. Mom, aged 38. All my friends, aged 11. You, aged 9.
I think I am rambling again. I suppose that’s all I have to say this week, just some thinking aloud for you. Take every piece of nonsense to say: I’m here, and the radio is always crackling.
With love,
Alice