Boy, active Mimi turned into passive Roe yesterday. Aside from talking to Betty and firming up our plans for Baltimore, did very little except re-pot the pineapple plant I got Susan and cut up veggies.
Other than that, I spent a lot of time on the computer, to wit:
I was going over some old letters and came across a long one from my close friend Joan Welsh. (Oh, I usually don't use last names, but Joan's been gone so long and had no family, I decided to.) Joan and I met at St. Nick's in freshman year in high school and became very close friends. She lived with her parents on Texas Avenue, so in Star of the Sea parish. Joan had the lead in the senior play--she sang--although she was very much overweight. Someday I'll write about her and her parents, a relationship so different from mine it was remarkable to me, and very fraught.
Anyway, the letter was l-o-o-on-g--eighteen hand-written half-pages--and I had copied the eoriginal, which was dim, so I re-typed it onto the computer. It was wonderful to read. It's dated November 18, 1956, a month before I turned 20. (Yes, children, I'm an old lady.)
The letter mentioned my sister, Jeanne P., and Jane M., to all of whom I sent it. But it also talks about Mark H., Cassie W., Bill D., and so very many others, all gone now, some for years. Joan herself died about eight or ten years ago.
I have a box of letters to me from that era--after I had moved to Florida. Maybe someday I'll assemble the whole story, but not now.
Anyway, reading Joan's letter after these years gone so quickly by, I had such an eerie sensation of being two people at once--my present self and that girl I wish I had known better, the young Rosemary. Now she's gone and so are so many of my friends and classmates.
"O lost and by the wind grieved/Ghost, come back again..."
Thomas Wolfe knew what the heart knows.