Writing.

I am back at home after getting progressively more phlem-ish at work. After another searing ginger/mustard bath the cat & I passed out for the midday snooze, waking up drenched in sweat. With ginger baths, that's pretty much the point.

My late sister Heather has been appearing in my dreams again, each time less communicative and more strangely dressed. It means something, but I haven't worked it out yet. It's not unwelcome, but I'd like to know what she wants and just what's up with the hat with teddy bear ears. She's always writing in her large unsteady cursive, pressing very hard.

This week Mum (a closet sentimentalist) ran across a letter Heather wrote to me (never delivered) shortly before I moved out of my parents house in 1989. The rest of the family were on vacation in Hawaii, while I stayed home trying to put my life together mourning the cataclysmic end of a five year relationship that hinged on the upcoming move to Seattle. Heather wrote wanting to know how her dog was and described everything they had done so far. Mom got a choked up just talking about it.

The people who taught and worked with Heather were always surprised that she could write at all and that she read for pleasure. The posthumous discoveries of her secretive writing habit has been both fascinating and heartbreaking. We find continue finding things in old bags, in pockets, missing pages, undelivered and for her personal reflections.

So now I wonder what is spontaneous writing all about. Hers, mine, ours. Yours.