Decade One: Kid Times

 As I think about life and who's been important to me, I keep looking for photos. This is tricky because there are plenty of things that were incredibly important to me that I have no photos of, and conversely things that I have a ton of photos of that I don't care about or don't remember.

But here's a super fun memory photo:

This is, I *think*, my fifth birthday, which my mom arranged as a "dress-up" party. In my memory, this was COMPLETELY AMAZING. I wore an old dress of my aunts, I think, with that enormous silk bow in my hair, and everyone else had fun hats and gloves and such - you can see the fab chunky necklace on the kid next to me in blue! It's 1979, and we are dressed to the nines and eating chocolate cake.

I have no idea what else we did at this party - we were in fancy clothes so we couldn't have done much, but everyone looked great. 

#2 - Eddie

From you, I noticed
Silence is a kind of listening - 
Music is a kind of speech.

I'm hankering for squash casserole,
stories of my grandparents,
and Friday night jam sessions in the GA mountains.

With love, Elizabeth

#1 - Peter

 

#1
To Simon Peter

How do I begin?
Heave my heart into my mouth
wrestle it to paper?
Can I gild these words so the joy of you shimmers?

Your handwriting on a page - 
an illuminated manuscript - 
has always brought me glee.
I must begin with you.

The farthest stars can still shine brightest.
My delight of you ripples forwards (anticipation)
and backwards (jeweled memory),
you are the shift in all these seas.

With love, Elizabeth

Decades, the project

 So. 2024. This year I turn 50. I have lots and lots of postcards I never sent. I have lots of people I'd like to partially thank for what they mean to me. And I would like to start writing again, at least a little. 

This is the start of the Decades Project: With Love, Elizabeth

Each week I'm sending a postcard to someone in my past (or present!) with a short poem on it and "With love, Elizabeth."

50 postcards, for 50 years of life, 50 weeks out of the year.  Oh, the year has 52 weeks, you say?  Yes, I decided I get my birthday week and the last week of the year off.

I've already made a list of the 50 people, I even tried to pick approximately 10 folks from each decade of my life, though I'm not making myself send them in that order.

I'm trying to keep the project open for lots of reasons - a postcard isn't a lot of space, I'm not sure how this will go, etc., but I am setting myself two small...let's call them goals, not even rules. 

1. I spend the week thinking about that person and making multiple drafts of a postcard poem to them. 

2. While I hope the 50 postcard poems will connect, I'm more interested in the person I've picked that week. Something in the poem has to be person-specific. It may not be literal, but they are a gesture of thanks for the impact the person has had in my life.

Oh, I might jot down more info here on occasion. But the info and the experience is meant for me, to inspire me with gratitude and thankfulness for all the people I've been lucky enough to know. This is unlikely to turn into any big thing. It's just, a weekly hello to people I love. And a way to wear down my excessive stack of extra postcards.