The Lemon Life | online magazine offering a fresh perspective on post-grad life.

Words by: Jamie Phillips

Image by: Leeay Aikawa

Dear Reader,

How are you doing these days? I hope this letter finds you basking in the sun, and letting the heat melt any future-related anxieties away. I just love summer, don’t you? My existential crisis-ing seems to abate some with the warm weather and increased distractions. Why worry about the big Life Plan when there are trashy novels to read, eh? Today was the first sunny day in a long time – it’s been raining like the third circle of hell around here lately – and so my friend and I took her dogs for a swim in the river. Afterward, we went for slurpees and I couldn’t help but think how perfect a day it was, even with a sopping wet golden retriever drooling on my shoulder.

Days like today are also a great opportunity to catch up on correspondence. When I moved away for school, I took to letter writing like a veritable Simone de Beauvoir. By now I could fill a novel with the email exchanges between my friends and I. My email account has seen lifetimes of break ups, hook ups, life plans, hopes and disappointments, family problems and personal successes. Hotmail should consider itself lucky! Sometimes, when I’m bored, I read through them and instantly I’m transported back to that time and that mind frame. Those letters are like verbose time capsules, electronic effigies of experience. I’ve decided to keep them, so if I ever do anything great with my life, I can use them for my memoirs.

One letter in particular sticks out in my mind: three hastily scribbled pages that were the advent of my letter writing career. I wrote it to my older sister, with the R rating clearly displayed on the envelope and strict instructions that she open it only after she’d boarded her plane to France. She had just graduated from High School, a year before I would, and she was going on a grand adventure. She was taking the year off before going to University, and moving to Paris for eight months to work as an au pair for a wealthy French couple. I was, naturally, quite jealous, but thought I’d display some good sisterly support nevertheless. After all, it was the first time we were going to be apart for any extended period of time. So, with the idea of sending a little bit of me with her, I hand wrote her a quirky letter filled with cartoons, words of praise and encouragement and promises to chronicle my life in letter form for her, so she wouldn’t miss anything.

She reciprocated when I moved to Vancouver a few years later, with a similarly quirky hand written note, and in it she spoke of the same things I had years prior - how the jealousy she felt about my new adventure was vastly overshadowed by her excitement for me (but seriously, how jealous could she be? She was the first one to leave the nest - and to France, no less. She had me beat and she knew it). These letters were not only written to entertain the other on our journeys, but to celebrate each other’s choices, and chutzpah. With that letter in hand, as I jumped into my brand new, strange and exciting city, I felt brave and ready to take that city on. And the pen wins again. Take that, sword!

Anyways, I suppose I’ve rambled on enough here. I hope the rest of summer treats you well, and that you have some exciting fall prospects. And hey, if you are ever in need of the catharsis and connection that writing a letter affords, drop me a line!

Love,

Jamie

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