Things I Don’t Do: Return Phone Calls

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Cold War Kids, communication, distance, friends, friendships, geography, letters, love, mail, pen pals, phone calls, post office, relationships, voicemail, writing

Note: See other items on a list of Things I Do or Things I Don’t Do here: Cook Dinner, Watch TV, Make the Bed

The conundrum of the phone call situation is that I do actually have the mathematical time to return them. But, considering what it takes to return a phone call: the geography, the headspace, the time commitment, the concentration to conversationally catch up, the mathematical time isn’t a great quantifying measure.  Returning phone calls is up there with serious commitments like getting married. So when I say I don’t have time or that I’m too busy, I don’t mean in minutes; I don’t mean that I’m flying around with my jet pack strapped to my shoulders on the run all day. What I mean is that I can’t sacrifice all that it takes to commit to a phone call. Or, to be real and raw, I won’t.  I value the now too much; phone calls don’t feel like right now to me.

It’s part of the reason I tried so hard and for so many years to brand myself as a letter-writer. Everyone knows. Everyone who knows even a little knows this about me. And they don’t write, no one does (Yes, Strongs, except for you). So I feel, even self-righteously (I’ll admit), totally justified in my ignored voicemails, when my mailbox is empty of your letter.

With a letter, I can choose my geography and a comfortable headspace. I can start the letter on the train, where the cell phone towers can’t reach, and stop when I arrive at work with minutes to spare. I can finish when I get home, listening to Cold War Kids in my stereo speakers and eating an apple at the desk. I can take a walk while I deliver your letter, I can make an appointment, or call my mom (my mom does get calls back; don’t fuss, it’s different). I enjoy writing in a way I do not enjoy the labor of calls, especially calls back, when I’m on the guilty end of the exchange, so stuck and jailed by my phone call obligations. If these nuances could just be public about the weaving and knitting inside of me, I would never have personal, only professional, voicemails.  In the meanwhile, I make no sincere apology about this thing I do not do.

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Relationships cannot be maintained by mail.

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chance, change, coffee, communication, effort, envelope, friendship, hockey, letters, life, love, mail, past, speculation, talking, travel, writing

I cannot win you over or back by affixing the self-adhesive stamp.
I will not turn time to hallways and hand-written notes, wide rule notebook paper
With bi-fold cards, sentiment on scrapbook paper, newspaper cutouts, gift cards

If we cannot have a cup of coffee,
Sit hours in uncomfortable chairs to tell stories,
I cannot know that you like the foam extra dry, that you don’t even like coffee
Peppermint tea with soy milk and honey

If I cannot be in the folding stadium seat beside you
On the ice, behind the boards or in the balcony, beer in a plastic cup
Swimming in the sleeves of my right wing who was on the Maple Leafs—
Now the Flyers

I cannot send myself to you
I cannot cross state lines
I am liquid and perishable
I am hazardous and otherwise fragile
I have crossed state lines, I have sent myself to you
I have bore this bridge
Unbroken this chasm, if only now, by mail.
And—

There is the possibility that this cannot be maintained by mail.

Cut Off

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bold, Chicago, communication, falling in love, friends, Godly man, letter, love, mail, past, relationships, visits, words

I’m always the one doing the cutting off. I don’t know why, exactly. I’m not necessarily the type. I’m a pretty likeable person, they say. Unless no one tells the truth around here. I love to have fun, love to love–sometimes too much. But I tend to see my weaknessess and hesitate to step in too far where I’ll falter. That’s where I find myself cutting off. You’d say I cut you off, right?  Or, tried.  It was the way I thought things should go.

I try to be clear. I use my words. I remember to never make promises, because that’s not fair. I sit at kitchen tables, in parked cars on the street, on the steps of some church down the street from your place, all to explain why I think this way will be better. You fight it, you don’t hear me, only I understand.

Memories and loneliness make me turn the choice over and over, make me make sure it’s right, in the months that follow. We write letters because I said we could. I frown when you call. And when you send messages meant to make me laugh. You are breaking the rules we made, but really only I made them. I’m the one cutting off because only I understand.

Your words are as clear as these months are long. You’re stuck on me, which is not good.  So to be clearer still, I tell you about the man I fell in love with years ago. Whose salvation I involuntarily wait on. Not because it has anything to do with you and me, but because the way I wait on him is the way you’re waiting on me. And I can’t figure who’s the bigger fool. You don’t see what I’m saying, but you see something else. Something more. Because you love me, you see the way I’m stuck on this stubborn man and you see how it’s crushing me. In the end, because of it all, you cut me off.

I’ve never been cut off before. Not really. Not unless I was the one building the wall between us. I’m stunned at your finality. I will not expect a letter from you, you say. I do not think it’s a good idea to see you–and you underline do not. The ball’s in my court, you tell me, but only if I want to love you. And I can’t make myself love you.

The stiff arm you give me is bold and sure. You’ve not spoken to me with such confidence before. With such assurance. With such leadership. When I asked you for leadership–and I asked you for leadership–you never gave me this. But I ask you not to wait on me, and you give me a man of God that I could fall for. The distance of being cut off feels so isolated. And isolation is not a feeling with which I am well-acquainted.

Time Lapsed Love

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communication, email, friendship, letters, life, love, mail, mailbox, phone, post office, tangible love, text message, words, writing

The most wonderful thing about letters is the time lapse. You walk out to the mailbox with an anticipation, however mild, for the short stack of papers that’s inevitably waiting inside when you pull down the hinged door. If your mailbox is anything like the ones where I’ve been getting my mail for the past few years, most of that paper isn’t for me. But if just one item says Miss Linda Sullivan on the front, that mild anticipation fizzes and pops like a cork out of a champagne bottle. A letter for me! Wee!

The interesting thing about the time lapse in letters, especially in a generation of immediate and technologically assisted gratification, is the concept that someone was thinking of you a few days ago, even a week ago, but not necessarily, and probably not right now.

A letter takes time to fashion. You must first decide to write it. It takes time to gather pen and paper, or fancy stickers and cardstock. Time to print pictures or make CDs. Time to send packages with pieces of clothing inside. It takes time to write—to craft words that mean something and say what you mean to say instead of saying something else. It takes time to find envelopes and buy stamps and maybe even to find the post office. It takes years to build up an address book of all the folks you like, and then they move and don’t live there anymore so it takes time to chase them around in order to write them so they know you still like them. Writing letters takes time.

And so when I open my mailbox and there’s a letter for me, I know that whoever claims the spot on that return address label took the time. Took the time to fashion something that would float around in baskets with wheels and comfortably in the bed of a white postal truck for days as it made its way from zip code to zip code, finding me. And by the time I get that letter, the time that was spent tangibly saying I love you is over. It was days ago, but I’m just getting tuned in now, standing at the mailbox. Sending letters is like constantly playing catch-up.

I find the warm feeling at the mailbox, the one that recognizes the time lapse in communication and appreciates it, more fulfilling than the vibration of my phone, alerting me to a text message or the white bar in my gmail inbox that says I have an unread email. I love those things too, and I experience mild excitement when they happen. Truly, I do (Is that sad?). But, the satisfaction of time lapsed love is far superior to me. And even a little bit more mysterious. And so, this is why I will always write letters and love receiving them.

Pen Pal II: a poem

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change, communication, dialogue, letters, mail, pen pal, post-it notes, youth

She used to write letters,
draw pictures with crayon.
Her tongue would stick on glue
when she licked to close and send.

She wrote, what’s your name?
I don’t like math.
And then he, in crooked pencil, Troy
and a stick boy saying me, too.

Now she says, be my pen pal.
I’ll write you everyday.
She thinks this missing can be cured
with these words.

She writes, write by hand.
I’d know your script anywhere.
She thinks he’ll sign I love you
because, it’s true, he still does.

Soon she won’t write anymore.
She’ll give her envelopes away,
and draw stick boys and thought clouds
on post-it notes to herself.

Penpal: a poem

Tags

letters, love, mail, pen pal, writing

She says, be my pen pal.
I’ll write you everyday.
She thinks this missing can be cured
with these words.

She writes, write by hand.
I’d know your script anywhere.
She thinks he’ll sign I love you
because, it’s true, he still does.

Hello, Mister Post Office Man

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, information age, letters, mail, post office, stamps, Willie Wonka, writing

I don’t visit the post office all too often, but probably more than you do. In the age of high-tech, internet, computer-whatever, our correspondance is usually flying over our heads in invisible little microbits, reconfiguring itself on someone else’s email inbox half a nanosecond later. Information flies all over the place like through the transporter for the spoiled chocolate-loving kid and his mom in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

So, about the post office…I like letters. Plain-old stamp in the corner, old-school address on the front, nasty lick-y seal to keep it all safe letters. Maybe five years of being a camp counselor and trying to stay connected by a thread to real life while I wasted away in the nearly telephone-less expanse of UP forest, maybe that re-fueled my pen-pal tendencies. Who knows. But whatever the cause, I’ll always and still write letters. Even when I’ll see you tomorrow, or I just talked to you on the phone, even if I sent you three emails with attachments earlier today. A letter’s just…different. And I like it.

An affinity which brings me periodically to the post office. There’s not usually many people there at all.  Never any employees and only a few folks needing mail services. So I’ve grown accustomed to waiting in line a minute or two, trying to smile and not look impatient or annoyed, getting my business done and hopping back in the car to pump some tunes. There’s always an old man who has forgotten how post offices work and they ask him to step to the side and fill out twelve forms, a young kid who doesn’t address anything on the envelope correctly and doesn’t have any money, and a woman with her small child who’s terrified of the deadly germs her kid will contract from the little roller coaster toys that all the doctor’s offices have. Then there’s me. And there’s Bob.

Bob’s my man.  The lady with my name on her nametag is usually only there in the evening, but I think Bob stays there always.  And I’m the lucky one behind the yellow line when he says in his monotone I’ve come to love, “Next, please.  What can I do for you?”

I bring Bob new challenges every time I come in.  I forget zip codes, I wrap packages at home with the wrong tape, I refuse to put return addresses on envelopes with loose cash in them.  But Bob never fails, he is always indefinitely the same.  I ask for stamps and he has them in a blue basket to his left.  One cent-ers are behind him, and he walks slowly back to the shelf like speedier steps might make him forget what he’s going back there for.  He never offers to take my now-stamped letters, but when I ask he makes sure not to smile and sticks out his open palm.  

“Have a great day, Bob!” is met with silence.  Good job, Bob.  He never fails.