7.10.14 A Few Words From the Farm Before Bedtime

Well, I won't go into detail about today.  Let's just say it's 10:15 PM, there's still light in the sky, it's humid and about 80F.  It's Eastern Canada, where winter comes from the North Pole and summer comes from Louisiana.

My California friends will be surprised to find the water here is warmer than summer in So Cal.  And my Canadian friends doubt us when we describe the beaches in So Cal and say, "There are no biting bugs".
The bugs are biting here tonight.

I'm taking a friendly word of advice and moving my words to the blog.  Sort of against better judgement really.  It's easy to sit on facebook and poke out a few words. Kind of like writing a letter to you. And that got me thinking...

If you're my age you remember getting letters.  And if your're my age you probably have letters, saved by your family that you've never read. Somewhere in my mom's house is a box of letters my mom and dad wrote to each other in 1944-45. I've never read them.  A record of who my parents were as young marrieds in World War II.  And I'm not sure I want to know...what's in them. I'd like to leave them their privacy and innocence.

When my older brother went to Viet Nam, he wrote infrequent letters home. I remember my mom wrote him back asking him to please just write about the ordinary things he did. We were hungry for news about him. Not about the war.

On my birthday, I often got a small gift and a letter from my Dad's father.  It is the letters I remember.

When I was young, my mothers' family had spread far and wide.  They wrote letters to each other as uncles and cousins and brothers and sisters.  A package of letters would be forwarded to us with a new letter from the sender. We got the family news in California by post from mom's family in the east. A very old school format dating back to when my mom's family were immigrants on the plains with roots in the east.  And when we arrived here in PEI the old folks came to visit and shared local news on Sunday after church. In the States, years ago, the home folks sat down after church and wrote letters with local news to loved ones "far from home". We received them at our house into the 1970's. And I recognized the same tradition on PEI when I moved here.

I appreciate that some think my words are important. But really, they're not. All I'm doing is writing a letter to you every few days. I'm writing letters to you as your family used to write to you. I'm sharing the news like our families once did so we can stay close. That's all.

Goodnight.