a letter from Anna

Today when I got home from work I checked my mailbox. Inside was an envelope that had drawings of young girls, in bright colors, like some illustration out of The American Girl Store. The return address was from Illinois and the handwriting was that of a child's. Careful. Lines slanted. A small scribble where a letter had been started, but then thought better on. I stared at my own name and my address -- hard to transcribe for an adult, to be sure. Quite a feat for a 7 year old. Nishi-Shinjuku. 6-9-1. Tokyo. Japan. I had tears in my eyes in the elevator, imagining her, imagining me in this place, this far away place where even the address sounds nothing like the ones at home. Could there possibly be more to devour? Staring at her handwriting, I thought of Anna as a baby girl in her high chair, in Oklahoma. Eating her lunch, which I recall was maybe avocado and chicken and pasta. Just bouncing in her high chair, as I listened to Neil and Christina's Daniel Lanois that had come from Anne. Every time I hear the song "I love you," I think of Anna at that moment -- feeling so much love for her. (And then later, of my Uncle Paul -- because the lyrics seem to tell his story...)

Inside the envelope was a note on matching stationary. Dare I write it here? I hesitate -- and therefore will not. Anna wrote it to me, for me. And it will stay with me -- or for anyone who happens to be in my kitchen, as it is on the refrigerator. Now I have to find a good card (there are plenty around these parts) and fill it with my writing, my pen to paper, for my pen pal in Chicago, my niece, not a baby anymore.

There is nothing like getting something in the mail. How could I forget it? When I was here 15 years ago, I wrote letters every day. And anxiously awaited the epistles I'd receive from friends and family. The small stories. The subtle subtext of the mundane and the handwriting itself. The person themselves expressed by their own hand. The punctuation with it's own punctuation, in the way it came to be. Curly cued circles beneath a slap-dashed line for an exclamation point or a period -- either rushed because the next sentence couldn't wait to be told, or carefully rounded so as to bring the entire thought to rest before moving on to the next.

Anna Helen. I can't wait to write to you about Tokyo.