Well, it's a pretty chic thing these days. Celebrating that blog anniversary. But I was in Italy last year on my first blog anniversary so this really is my maiden blog celebration, even if it's my second anniversary.

As a child, I loved pen pals. Loved 'em! I had some faithful ones but never one as faithful as me as I was always, no matter the pen pal, the last, the final, to write. I began to write other things in high school, poetry, and so I gradually lost that childhood experience of correspondence and expression that I had so enjoyed. So as an adult, I come to an odd place in the road and I can't tell for sure why it's odd and where I am. It's takes me the better part of two years but then I figure it out: it's odd because I have been here before only under different circumstances. I know this place! It's really changed but it's the same place, I'm positive. It's the pen pal place only now they call it a blog. A blog!

The last time I was blogging was in my bedroom at the house my dad built for my mom when they moved to Idaho after the war. I would sit and scratch away on pretty paper at my little wicker desk and then seal the envelope with a flourish and stamp it and mail it. Oh how I loved laying it all out on paper and waiting to see what came back from far away (Wisconsin!) amazing places. I was the only girl in a family and neighborhood of boys and my amusement and entertainment was created by me, for me. I loved hooking up with these people from all over. Of course, in those days, you hooked up with pen pals through various resources recommended and endorsed by your teacher at school. And little girls wrote to little girls.

These days I correspond with all kinds of people who live much farther away than Wisconsin and who represent a highly diverse slice of life. And I hooked up with them through my blog. I began this blog because I noticed that my children, all adults, corresponded with each other and their friends in a manner that was so different than how I had corresponded with my mother when I was their age. We picked up the phone and talked to each other. Six times a day. We were dead in the water without the telephone. My friends, too. And then my mother died of dementia and there were so many things we never got the chance to talk about and so many things she told me about that I couldn't remember exactly. Her illness was long and slow and we know now that she got sick when she was not too much older than I am now.

So I don't want my children to grieve when they can't remember me. Or remember for sure. I don't want them to have blank pages in their baby books or their instruction manuals. And I want them to know, to know always, that I am with them and that I was in love with them. It was my life's joy and honor to be their mother.

So in the process of making 'Notes From The 'Kan EWA' for my children don't I run into some of the most darling, intelligent, funny, erudite, fascinating people of my entire life? And reconnect with people from my childhood who, once lost, sparkle and shimmer in my consciousness once more? In the process of writing 'Notes From The 'Kan EWA', I live a cherished chapter of my childhood in my beloved hometown all over again. Like deja vu, only with a full tank of gas and a credit card with a high limit.

Blogs. Just never saw it coming.


JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA