Dearest Rachel –
Ever since I started writing you like this, I’ve come to realize how necessary it is to keep a record of things as they happen – and expressed regret for not having done so in the past when we were still together. I’ve told newlyweds, both in dream and reality, of the necessity of keeping a record of one’s present before it becomes one’s past, and gets forgotten or distorted. I don’t want others to suffer the same regrets as I do of having such a spotty record to remember you by.
The thing is, there are days when I have trouble trying to follow my own advice. Some of them are because very little happens; or at least, it’s nothing that hasn’t happened before, and I don’t really want to describe a day that’s too similar to some other day that I’ve told you about in the past. Others cases are because I can’t quite find the words to describe the things I’ve seen; dreams, in particular, are like that, because they defy the logic of reality, so they’re hard to put into words that make sense.
But then there are other days where I simply don’t have the time on my own to get anything down in writing once I have an idea of what to tell you. It seems inappropriate at best, and churlish at worst, to give Daniel or Lars only my divided attention. So I want to have this written before I take off for the woods later this morning, but I also can’t get a head start on this letter the evening before because Daniel’s wanting to hang out with me after Sparks.
You taught him well, honey; he’s quite used to staying up until the wee hours of the night, just like you were. And (if I’m not mistaken) like you, he has a tendency to sleep in accordingly, thereby perpetuating this circadian rhythm that’s out of sync with my own. He’s able to stay up watching stuff for considerably longer than I’m capable of. So there’s no time the evening before in which I can feasibly get anything written.
To be sure, he’s at least accustomed to the fact that I can only last until somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00 at night, and is quite willing to head out from the bedroom man cave – especially if, like last night, we should happen to pass both of those temporal checkpoints. Oddly enough, I wasn’t as tired as I am some nights – he’s caught me nodding off on more than a few occasions, but that wouldn’t surprise you, as that was a common enough occurrence back in my work farce days – but I still had to call a lid on the night and send him off once the last video was done playing.
Once he’s gone and settled in over in the family room, my objective becomes going to sleep as quickly as possible, however I can. Writing down notes to send to you this morning, while useful in my own set of self-imposed priorities, conflicts with this objective. So I struggle to figure out which of these is pre-eminent, and usually sleep takes precedence, leaving me to scramble to assemble something in this hour between arriving at the ‘office’ and heading out to meet Lars.
And that not even considering the fact that I need to bone up on current events in order to discuss them with him. He keeps me informed about what’s going on in Europe (thanks to his many friends over there) – and tries to align my own limited perspective on certain ones that I’ve at least heard about – while I fill him in on what’s going on here in the States, since most of the political activity going on here doesn’t interest him enough to pursue it himself (despite being a naturalized, voting citizen here). All well and good – and it certainly fills the three hours it takes for us to walk through the woods from Golf Road to Willow – but it precludes my ability to write things down.
So I guess that, on a day like this, I have to accept that, while I might advise people to keep a written record of what’s going on in their lives when it happens – so they can refer to it at a later date and relive it to a certain extent – it’s not always that easy to do so in the moment in which it’s happening. If nothing else, when you have someone there beside you who needs you attention, it shouldn’t be pointed at a screen; not for the latest TikTok, but also not to try and write thoughts down. It’s difficult for me, and I’m no longer attached at the hip to someone I would be happy to be so connected to; so how much more should I give grace to others who do have that luxury.
And let’s face it; the reason I insist that these records be made and kept is to have something to look back on when the connection is no longer there. By definition, even in a “best-case” scenario, only one of you will be able to go through those old thoughts; the other, of course, will be where you are now, only able to look down upon the world if the mood strikes you, which, given all I’ve been told about heaven, would be as likely as staring at the gutter along a magnificent highway. And meanwhile, if the two of you split apart for other reasons, neither of you are going to want to go through those memories, as it would be like pulling at the stitches of some enormous wound. So maybe this advice isn’t as universal as all that, especially when I can barely follow it myself.
But still, it works for me, so I’m going to keep trying to.
