Dearest Rachel –
It happens so much less often these days – especially during busy seasons, such as the impending Christmas holidays – that you would think I would have plenty to tell you about when the girls come over. But it doesn’t seem to work out that way in practice.
To be fair, while these sorts of get-togethers are vanishingly rare in comparison to when you were still here – back then, at least one of them (and usually more) would be over almost every week – that is rather the point. You remember what those evenings were like, in part because they were so common; the fact that they aren’t anymore doesn’t change what they were like. We would have food either warming up in anticipation of their arrival (for all that Ellen insists that we eat beforehand, since a.) her diet is fairly restrictive, and b.) thanks to her work schedule, she considers herself lucky to arrive by seven o’clock, I can’t quite bring myself to do that entirely. Daniel and I may have eating our share when I came home from the ‘office’ with it, but I made sure that I’d picked up enough to share), or we’d be hanging out together in the kitchen for the first part of the evening in preparation of the meal (which still kinda happens, as both Ellen and Kerstin brought stuff for themselves, just in case I hadn’t supplied anything – which, admittedly, hadn’t been established until a couple of hours into the work day). Then we’d gather around the table – or, if the table was too cluttered (which it still is to this day – one more thing you’d find familiar about our life these days), throughout the family room – eat our separate meals and talk about our days, followed by (and interspersed with) watching this or that, once on network TV, now on YouTube.
There was some talk about watching another episode of Yorimoi, but Ellen objected that Erin wasn’t here to see it, so that idea was quickly shelved. Likewise, Ellen had brought games to play – and I had set up the computer in the bedroom for various party games like the Jackbox series – either of which you might have insisted on us playing, but ultimately, they too were set aside for the sake of conversation.
And while our absence from each other might lead to more conversation than back in the days when we would see each other so much more frequently, I couldn’t relate a whole lot to you that you would have found unusual in comparison to those days gone by. Life goes on in its various patterns as it always has; there’s little to tell you about that you wouldn’t already recognize. There’s stories about co-workers – lunch conversations, misadventures involving children, and the like – but the fact that I can summarize the gist of them in a couple words like that only goes to show that there’s a certain familiarity about them. You might not see the details coming at you until the stories are told, but there’s nothing particularly surprising about them once they are.
Indeed, it’s enough that Kerstin actually nods off somewhere along the line. Given that she’s just driven an hour and a half in the evening darkness to be here (after checking out from her weekly hotel posting in Beloit), however, there’s far more to her lassitude than can be attributed to Ellen’s stories. Nevertheless, Ellen owns up to the fact that she doesn’t consider herself to be the best storyteller out there – which is odd, since I’m patterning my stories to you after the ones she used to write to her family and friends (which, naturally, included us, despite the fact that we factored into those stories at some point in most of her letters). She even acknowledged that one of the children she would babysit back in the days when you two were still living back in Macomb used to ask her to tell her a story for the express purpose of lulling her to sleep; her stories were just that dull and boring, apparently.
In her defense, the letters she used to write, and the stories she tells to this day are mostly about actual things that happen to and around her (as are most of those I write you about). It’s one thing to talk about stuff that actually occurs, and maybe dress it up for public consumption, and another entirely to make something up whole cloth on the spur of the moment. The odds of creating something interesting like that could easily be expected to be of less-than-stellar quality, unless one had a great deal of practice or an innate knack for that kind of yarn-spinning. Without it, I imagine it would be all too likely to function as a soporific. At least her young charge found it useful, and was willing to use it in order to get herself to sleep at whatever hour her parents prescribed for her. I don’t know too many children who would be that cooperative about bedtimes, to be honest – or adults, for that matter (ahem).
It does make me wonder what you must think of some of these tales I spin for you every now and again. Yes, I’ve managed to send you something every day for all this time, but is it interesting? I wonder… and it seems like something I could go into more depth about, but the day is already coming to a close, and I’d like to get some rest before I need to be back in the booth tomorrow. But at least you know the gang is (for the most part) still getting together now and again; maybe next time, there’ll be something more unusual for me to relate.
Until then, however, keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck; I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 