Every year I feel the same bittersweet feeling about my month-long break from school. I struggle a lot with going home for the holidays, mostly because I am torn between this pure excitement to see my family and friends from home, and this epic sadness that comes from leaving my newfound life and friends at school. It’s fun to be able to live with your friends, eat all your meals together, and sometimes even go to class with them, too! I understand now why some people make their best friends in college; they’re the people who see you at your best and worst. Cecilia and I have definitely become those friends. We are going to be celebrating our 21st birthdays together, we rant to each other about our decisions in life, wondering if they were the right ones, and we know our coffee orders just in case it’s 10 PM and we both need to pull an all-nighter. We have become each other’s second family. After spending everyday together at school, naturally, it’s quite a shock to spend a whole month without someone so intrinsic to your existence. Over the break, to stay connected, we thought it would be cute to send each other letters–like being pen pals for a month. Let me just say that because of this letter writing effort I now hate the US postal service. “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night”… my a**. Our plans were thwarted by the evil US postal service, hell-bent on ruining my life. (I’m joking, but not really). I sent a letter on December 16th, 22nd, and 27th, yet nothing arrived until December 28th!
Ginny lives in Alameda, California, while I live in Chicago, not exactly a short train ride away. Luckily we live in the 21st century, and keeping in touch with really anyone is the easiest thing with a smartphone. We practically know each other’s family by now because of how much we shared our daily lives with each other while we were home! We also shared pictures of us sitting on our couches with our dogs or videos of snow storms and family parties as though we were there together. In some ways, it’s like we never left, but most days I still found myself missing my best friend. This year, we decided to challenge each other to write letters over the course of our time at home. Granted, I’m pretty bad at writing letters, (Ginny can attest to that because she’s good at everything), but I did it for the feeling I got when I opened the mailbox to find not one but three letters from my best friend, and that silly feeling I got when I dropped mine in the mailbox!
Writing letters can seem daunting, but you can write about anything: what you ate, what you watched on Netflix, a step-by-step of your day, a crazy dream you had, a word for word conversation–the list goes on and on. We wrote about everything we did and saw and thought while we were apart so it felt like we were still experiencing life together. We also thought it would be fun to ask each other some questions we had never asked when we were in person just to add a little more structure to what became some very long and ranting letters about the stress of family and the holidays.
Two of Cecilia’s Questions for Ginny:
C: What is one book that changed your life, why?
G: One book that changed my life is Prodigal Daughter by Jeffrey Archer. I cannot tell you much without spoiling it, but I gave me hope for the future and fuels my drive to change the world for the better.
C: If you could live anywhere in the world where would you live and why?
G: I would love to live in a Nordic country like Denmark, Finland, or Sweden. I’ve tried India and Kenya but I really don’t like the heat. Plus those countries are always ranked as the happiest ones so I would love to just curl up in a sweet little house near a fjord and be snug as a bug.
Two of Ginny’s Questions for Cecilia:
G: What is your favorite song to sing when you are alone? Why?
C: Easy–– John Legend’s “Ordinary People.” When I’m alone I totally belt this song at the top of my lungs. This is one of the songs that my Dad and I always sing together in the car, and by sing, I mean opening all the windows cranking the volume and screaming it. It’s so beautiful and reminds me of my Dad every time I hear the song.
G: This is a very specific question…. You must pick one country, one city, one street, and one house anywhere in the world that you want to live for the rest of your life. Why?
C: This had got to be the hardest question ever because I change my mind about my dream home every single day. Right now I have a fascination with Portugal, (I’m actually learning Portuguese at the moment!). I would want to live in the city of Porto, in a neighborhood called Ribeira in an apartment that overlooks the River Douro. I’d want to live there because (although I have yet to go) I feel like it is one of the most beautiful places in the world). I would love to see the sunrise or sunset over the river every day and be close enough to the city that I can walk or even bike or scooter into the city. It’s also named by UNESCO in 1996 a World Heritage center so there is a lot of history and culture there that I think would be the best place to be.
In all, despite the lag in postal delivery, I am really glad we did this. Texting is wonderful but there is nothing like getting a letter from your best friend just when you need it, to hear their voice in every word and feel connected to them despite the difference in space and time. I was able to really think about what I had done or felt and why, then express that in a really cathartic and powerful way that simply wouldn’t have worked over text. It’s like a journal that writes back. I find it so funny that we as a society have lost this love of writing letters; it was really so amazing to hold my best friend’s words and just feel her there with me. 10/10 would recommend everyone try writing to their friends, even if you live just a few yards away. There is no feeling so warm as to open a mailbox and find a little something wonderful inside.