Today I feel like telling a story. It’s a story many of my friends have heard already. I’ve told it countless times. Even the admissions offices at the schools I applied to in my senior year of high school know it, because it was my personal statement.
The one thing that always varies is how I begin the story. I never quite know where to start, and despite having told it a million times already, I still haven’t decided on my favorite beginning.
I guess it all started in 2002, when I was 7. My mom wanted me to improve my writing skills, so she had me write letters to a past coworker of hers, from those long ago days when she’d worked at Polaroid in Cambridge, MA. This friend of hers, Richard, had been an English teacher prior to working at Polaroid.
So I dutifully wrote my poorly-spelled, poorly-grammaticized, poorly-handwritten letters. And Richard dutifully edited them for spelling and grammar mistakes before sending them back to me. I was 7, and he was 74.
As the years went on and I grew older, we graduated to full-on typed, multi-page letters. The dialogue grew, too, as Richard’s wife, Jean, partook in our letter-writing activities.
In short, our penpal-ship continued until 2006. I’ve kept every single letter they ever sent me. 2006 was a pivotal year, because that was the year I met Jean and Richard in person, for the first time ever. After 4 whole years of interacting with them through only written form, it was quite mind-blowing to finally see these people I’d grown to love.
They’d road-tripped across the country, from Massachusetts to California, stopping along the way to see friends and family of course. My house was their last stop before turning back.
My parents and I spent an unforgettable weekend with them, and barely a week after they’d left, I missed them so terribly that I gave them a call.
We spoke for over an hour. It was a wonderful hour, they consoled me that they would still be there for me always, and we ended by agreeing to speak the next week, same day, same time.
And thus we began our weekly Sunday evening calls. We spoke for an hour on Sundays at 5pm PST/8pm EST, every single Sunday from 2006 t0 2013. I only ever missed a Sunday if I had a final exam to study for, I was in China, or I was in Tahoe skiing.
And those were such lovely chats! I loved hearing about their weeks (Jean is a very busy lady, what with her book club, garden club, tai chi, stock group, and operas) as well as their pasts (Richard has lived through so much history, talking to him can be like taking a step into the past). They frequently sent me newspaper clippings, books, magazine articles, and programs they thought I would find interesting. (I’ve also kept all of those as well.) As I spoke with these people who lived 3,000 miles from me and had grown up in a completely different generation, I learned of things I never would have learned otherwise and my mind opened up to new perspectives.
I hope it’s clear now why I wrote my college application essay on these two amazing friends of mine. They’d been an integral part of my childhood and, I like to think, greatly affected the person I am today.
The weekly phone calls stopped in 2013 because that was the year I came to Wellesley. We now live only 30 minutes away from each other! I spent last year’s Thanksgiving and Easter with them, as well as both Fall Breaks. I can’t express how happy it makes me to be so close to these people who are so special to me, and how nice it is to have “family” on this side of the country. I affectionately refer to them as my grandparents, and we’ve even developed traditions already. For example, Jean and I will almost always bake a loaf of gluten-free banana nut bread when I visit. They know kielbasa and beans is my favorite dish at their house, so they make it every time I’m there. We always have french toast on Saturday mornings, with Farmer Twitchell’s maple syrup. (Farmer Twitchell is a friend of theirs in Vermont who makes and sells maple syrup.)
This was a much longer version of the story than the nutshell version I usually tell new friends, but I hope it was a good read, and that you share my opinion that it’s a great story. I mean, how likely is it that a Chinese-American girl from California is this close to a Caucasian couple from Massachusetts? And how many people still write letters??
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I thought I’d end with some comic relief; here’s one of the first letters I wrote to them, back when I was still writing strictly to Richard. I hope you enjoy my poor handwriting and ridiculous spelling/grammar as much I did reading over them just now.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
