John and I are in massive clean the basement mode. We've managed to get rid of 11 boxes and are now hitting the hard stuff--like old letters. I'm not planning to get rid of any of them, but I decided to actually look at some.

My emotions are all stirred up, of course. But I'm not as freaked out as I thought I would be. I don't care that Eric is ambivalent about whether we will get back together sophomore year. (We did.) I'm not sad that Andrew H. and I share facebook posts now instead of long letters, but I am rather amused that he wrote he was never going to fall in love again and now is happily married. I love that Mallory complains that the family she is nannying for are too commercial and not intellectual enough. In the letters from John I see patterns, good patterns still in play. Some more observations:

so many of you are still in my life

I say that you deliberately because many of you are reading this now. I would say one third of the letters are from people still at the center of the life--my family, obviously; John, Nancy, Becky . . . One third have dropped down to occasional emails and facebook updates and fabulous visits when we are in the same city--Sonke, Eric, Mallory, Turtle, Ruth . . . . And a third--Karen Smith, Rick Hecht--I haven't spoken to in twenty-five years, but I bet with the Swarthmore degrees of separation, some of you have. I am stunned and grateful to have such depth to my friendships, to have known so many of you so long and so well.

we wrote

I don't know about kids today with all their new fangled gadgets like iphones, email and texting, but back in the day, we yearned for each other. Phone calls were expensive and hard to arrange. We missed each other terribly and wrote long letters about our housemate who yelled at the t.v., the gray cat we were trying to befriend, and the Joanne Russ novels we were reading. (Oh wait, that was all one letter from Eric.) We gossiped, we consoled each other, we shared our deepest fears about identity, we joked and flirted. I'm sure someone has done a sociological study about how friendships have changed because of easy brief communication. I'd be interested in reading it.

we were so young

Yup, Debby, the 19 year old who thinks she's so mature, you are very very young. And I'm not even reading the letters I wrote (furious blushing ensues); I'm reading the exuberant and heartfelt responses I got. I need to file this away under the advice for kids category--it all matters, it really does, but it doesn't matter that much. Take a deep breath. This too will pass.