Past and Present

I just had one of those "bonding type" moments with my mom. I saw an old letter on her nightside table and noticed that the sender was my grandpa on my dad's side. I asked her about the letter and she explained to me that back then more than 20 years ago, my grandpa would write her letters. She lived in Hong Kong with my dad at that time, while my grandpa had already immigrated from China to Canada. As I looked at the return address on the envelope, I recalled the name of the street where I used to spend my toddler life. Blake Street. I remember how me and my grandpa would walk a few blocks to Gerrard Square, where they had McDonalds, and I would play at their playground, and he'd buy me a happy meal, and then afterwards, we'd spend time at the Dollar Store.

Anyway, back to the story. My mom read that letter to me, in it were things like "Congratulations on your graduation", I think my mom got married before she graduated from getting her master degree, because the letter was addressed to Lee, which is my father's last name, unless my grandpa spelt it wrong, because my mom's last name is spelled Li, which is almost the same.

There were things in the letter that were like your sister-in-law (which is my aunt) is about to have a baby (my cousin), and also about his Australian vacation with my grandma.

The concept of a letter is so romantic. Nowadays, we just email people, or text people, and its so normal and ordinary that recieving some message is not as special as it used to be.

I used to be an avid letter writer. This was back in grade school, where me and my best friend (she went to another school) would send snail mail letters back and forth, and we'd try to stuff as much paper into the envelope as we could, and write papers and papers full of little everyday things. I still have a box of all the letters in my closet. We would write about crushes, and life, and "remember when".

Nowadays, we phone call everything, which is faster, but I suppose its negative side is that years from now, we won't remember what we talked about. We'll just know that we had a great time together, but nothing is in paper. I am a sentimental person, and a little piece of my heart breaks because I know everything will keep changing. We're having phone conversations now, but what if the phone calls end up to being less frequent in the future?

Right now, I have it good. I'm 18, young and energetic, still optimistic, and excited to keep discovering life. I don't want to grow up, stop this train!