Letter from my Aunt review

 

Just got a letter from my Aunt Stella, which was sent to me in response to a letter I'd sent her the beginning of February. She had funky and clever stationery which held obscured the sender, but it was so modern I thought it was from one of my newer penpals. I think what surprised me the most is that people from my parent's generation and my own parents themselves never actually write me back (though I have been promised a letter from my aunt in Manila soon!). But I was really, really surprised and moved. Most people have jobs and nieces they like better. It shows effort.

I cried reading it. Her nest has been empty since her only son (my little cousin Zachary :3) has gone off to university. She's been single-momming it for like 15 years and they were really close. The way she described it in her letter— you're parenting for so long, and you find solace when they're off to Kindergarten, but all of a sudden 4-8 years pass you by and they're off to school and developing their own minds. She told me that time passes a little differently when you watch a little human grow up in front of you at speeds that you barely remember. It doesn't help that she's stopped being an on-call anesthesiologist, and was thusly far less busy than she used to be. She's killing time. She told me about her many imminent travel plans, and expressed a lingering fear of getting too old to travel. She feels it on the horizon. 

There's something about writing your own feelings out by hand, no matter who you're sending it to. Though I think back to recent, kind of existential conversations we've had casually at the table early in the morning (we were always the earliest risers among our siblings)— we had begun to talk about growing apart and away from family, but she expressed relief that me and my sisters were so close and in a time where we have the devices to be so connected still. Her earnest tone and messy handwriting just reminded me that she used to be someone young and frazzled, and maybe parts of that are coming back to fill the empty house. 

I was really glad to hear from her. It's strange to relate to someone who's in a phase of their life 30 years away from you, but maybe the way she and I cope with loneliness is the same in some ways. I imagined her fiddling with the high-end stationery, peeling off the stamp, and writing my name on the envelope. That she wrote it on a desk under the skylight, hastily and with my last letter in hand. I envisioned her lawn furnishings and that dilapidated basketball hoop, and saw the letter sit in the mailbox until dawn, when it was picked up and began its journey to me.