Pen Pals

Jeanna GLeave a comment

I mentioned in a previous post that my first best friend moved away when I was in second grade. Sadly, we did not have any contact information, so we lost touch and I never saw or heard from her again. When my daughter was in second grade, her close friend also moved away. Covid had just entered our worlds, and her friend’s family made a very quick decision to move to Florida to be closer to their relatives. She did not get a chance to say goodbye, and I felt so sorry for her.

Fast-forward two and a half years, and my daughter finds a note in the mailbox from that same friend. Apparently they were driving through town and thought to pass by and leave a note with their new address and a request to be pen pals. We were so excited!

I had several pen pals when I was young. Most of them were friends I met at summer camp, one of which lived in Spain. My friend, who I only saw in the summers when we went to Pennsylvania, is still my dear friend, and we still send cards to each other. My grandma was my pen pal for several years. I even had a pen pal from Germany. I’m not sure how that came about, but I’m pretty sure it was along the same lines as a chain letter. Remember those? People who participated were supposed to get so many in return, but that never happened for me. What a gimmick!

As a blogger, I obviously like to write, but mailing letters seems to have become a thing of the past. When emails were invented, I sent them off to friends and family, but now email is associated with work, so I don’t write many for fun. Texts took over next, but those aren’t even close to writing or receiving a letter. When my daughter got the request to be a pen pal, I was so excited for her. We both love getting things in the mail. Maybe I should start writing letters again, but who would write back?

The Days of Our Lives

Jeanna G1 Comment

I read today that John Aniston recently passed away. He played Victor Kiriakis on NBC’s Days of Our Lives for a very long time. This news flashed memories from childhood across my mental screen. My grandma started watching the show when it first aired back in 1965. She was a housewife, and everyday she took an hour off from the cooking and cleaning and child-rearing to enjoy her program. When I was in Kindergarten, my mom ran a daycare out of our house. I attended the morning program at school, so I was getting home as she was putting all of her charges down for a nap. This was also right on time to lie on the couch with my mom while she watched the same soap opera.

Both my grandma and mom worked their tails off, and they deserved much more than an hour-long break everyday. I work a full-time job outside of the home, so I don’t get to follow in my matriarch’s footsteps and watch tv daily from 1-2pm, but I deserve a break, nonetheless.

I heard a devotion the other day that really struck a chord with me. It was about the sacredness of the mundane (I apologize I do not know the title or author of the devotion). We can practice this by slowing down, and in those moments we have an opportunity to “discover a spark of joy,” even in activities that we do as routine or out of necessity, and not necessarily out of spontaneity or want.

Every day I’m rushing around and thinking about what’s next, instead of being present. My grandma and mom were wise women to know they needed to stop and take a break every day, for themselves. Sometimes we need to escape in order to be more present. And the author of the devotion is right about slowing down, because we all know that, “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”

To Scare or Not to Scare…

Jeanna GLeave a comment

Why do we try to scare each other and ourselves? As FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is…fear itself.” So why try to create more fear and chance traumatizing ourselves?

When I was young, my friends and I used to play Ghosts in the Graveyard. It was played at night, in the dark, out in the yard. One player would hide, while the rest of us creeped around the yard looking for that player. Once the person hiding was found, they would chase after all of us as we ran back to the safety of home base. This game was thrilling in the sense that it was fun, but scary as hell! I didn’t like to be the one to hide, because then I’d just be sitting in the dark listening to all of the sounds that go bump in the night. “What was that?” I’d wonder, as my imagination spiraled. Was that a person? An animal? Just the wind in the leaves? Big foot??

At slumber parties there were always the late night rituals of telling ghost stories and playing games like Bloody Mary and Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. Some friends even pulled out the Ouija Board. We would conjure up these sensations of spirits, and not necessarily friendly ones, like Casper. There was always one girl who ended up crying, who I was grateful for, because that signaled the end of freaking each other out.

I never understood the desire to watch horror movies. My sister and her friend would watch all the Freddy and Jason movies, but I steered clear. I had to draw the line somewhere. Vision can be a curse; things seen can’t be unseen.

Halloween is what you make it, I suppose. I was always in it for the candy, and my costumes were more Wonder Woman and less Wicked Witch. But even though I was out for the treats, I was taking my chances with the tricks. It’s the not knowing that creeps me out the most. What’s around that corner? What’s making that noise? Who’s really behind that mask?

As spooked as I got, I still participated, and I’m trying to understand why. Adults threatened us with the Boogeyman if we weren’t acting right, but it’s not like they encouraged us to scare the shit out of each other. We did that all on our own volition! Maybe it’s all about self-defense and we were just gearing up to be able to conquer our inevitable fears. Maybe we did it to remind ourselves that we really were safe, and that what we conjured up in our imaginations was just that: imaginary. And maybe we practiced being brave for those times in life when we would face the real scary stuff…like hormones.