2025 was a year of grieving. Despite the glimmers – the first half with Miyo, the Niagara Falls, a restorative countryside break, my sister marrying her soulmate and my brother marrying his – it’s the dense, gray fog of grief that took up more space.
Some things I parted from of my own volition, and it was for the best. Other losses I’ve had a harder time coming to terms with. The biggest one was, by far, Miyo’s passing. The long process of selling the family house, though, emptying it of its contents, bit by bit, seeing it look less and less lived-in as the months went by, brought its fair share of sorrow.
For quite a while I’ve had my own place, but I’d still spend a lot of time in my homeplace. It housed a large family for so long it developed a certain sentience: each room had its own presence, soaking up the tears we shed, keeping secrets, echoing silences, holding our laughter.
When I return there in my mind, it’s still clear: my bedroom and its light yellow wallpaper; the worn-out desk chair I’d sat on countless times, my feet on the boxes full of text books, binders, and dictionaries; the homespun midnight blue curtains and the window with a view over our modest garden; the streets we could’ve crossed with our eyes closed; the things we’d walk past and today wish we’d been more aware of.
This decluttering journey had me dive into old drawings, photo albums, and letters.
**
In an old Hush Puppies shoebox, I found again the manila envelope with little notes my girlfriends and I passed to each other in class, two friendship notebooks, a handmade book of games, a made-up warmup, and letters from family and such-and-such friends. The bulk of it, though, is letters from my then-bestie whom I met at 8, from when we were 10 until we were 13.
We’d spend our breaks together, have long phone conversations every day, communicate through text messages on occasion, and invite each other over.
Our dependency on one another was too much, but I never stayed consistent with journaling: we were each other’s diaries – a safe space for the questions troubling us and our big feelings.
On these pages, we’d vent about exams, homework, teachers, frenemies, hair not growing out as fast as desired. Sometimes we were made to feel inadequate, sometimes we were the mean girls but, even then, there was enormous innocence in how we’d phrase our thoughts and figure out situations.
The letters were also a chance to gush over this crush, that one, the classmate who according to her gave a look that showed he was truly “in <3” with me but whose attention I’d shrug off. What story would I tell today, had I been less studious and this penpalship less central to my life? I wonder what would’ve happened, if I’d told him I liked him back – or the other almost love whose full name I still remember, too, together with other details; how it would’ve shaped me.
Romance inspired both fascination and terror, as did womanhood. My friend writes, here, about her visit to a grownup ladies clothing store with clothes her size where she tried a miniskirt only to feel awkward about the salesman’s gaze and comment outside the fitting room; there, about being grossed out by a boy kissing a girl in a closet and mortified her mother caught her watching that movie scene.
We had an intense fear of periods which we’d code-name “les R” (“the P”), or “brown hair” in speaking – fear which tampon commercials would exacerbate, fear of telling our mothers on the fateful day. We’d look out for first signs and later, as menstruating girls, worry if we missed them.
As a young girl, my complexes and thoughts on my body were funny: I didn’t like my pointy elbows, my too-visible collar bone, didn’t understand why my knees went in opposite directions when sitting down. My self-consciousness was tinged with a curiosity about the mysterious human anatomy, how it’s all jointed together. Only later did it deepen and become fueled by social comparison.
Deep talks were interspersed with light-hearted descriptions about the ordinary (trying lip gloss for the first time, trying different hairstyles and dressing up out of boredom, watching 7th Heaven, wondering who’d win Eurovision).
We loved playing elastic until we didn’t anymore. We loved doing Love calculations – using yours and a classmate’s name to test your compatibility. Diddl was all the rage. It was also the age of Mobiclic, of Minnie Mag which became W.I.T.C.H. mag, and other things that no longer exist. And it all co-existed with the aftermath of my dad’s death, 9/11, the euro put into circulation…
Most of the letters were from Brussels, some from Spain where she’d vacation. Some were sent by post, others handed. Some were written on lovely stationery, others on ruled or graph paper. A great many were handwritten – and playfully ending with “Big Bisous Bien Baveux”, others typed in whimsical fonts. Some letters we perfumed; some came bearing gifts (e.g. one letter wears a now withered Scotch-taped flower), but really the letters themselves were the presents.
We’d put so much heart into them, caring about making them pretty, covering them and the envelopes with stickers with extra speech bubbles, drawings, etc. We’d include printed images or cuts from magazines, a rebus, what have you. We’d make time for them despite our extracurricular activities and everything else.
Immersing myself in these letters as a 34-year-old felt very cozy. I found it all terribly endearing: the contradictions; the honesty; the silly fights that’d give nightmares; the effusiveness – we’d never tire of declaring our friendship to each other (“you’re my best friend in the whole world”, “My best best [endless ellipsis] friend”); the erratic handwriting, how we’d put circles instead of dots over our i’s, use multicolor pens, practice our signatures; the hyperbolic language, the liberal use of all-caps, underlining, question and exclamation marks; the spelling mistakes.
Some had me laugh, others made me dewy-eyed. With the “paws” of the table her father broke, my friend tells me in a letter, she made herself a hut with her lamp, a radio, books, and my letters. More than once, she’d reread my letters, too. I feel moved my words provided such comfort to someone. I considered quoting verbatim particularly cute or poignant passages, but it would’ve felt like a broken promise to my friend who’d devise tactics to hide the letters from her nosy parents and an invasion of the precious world these two girls created back then.
Letters from later years I kept in a letter storage bag hung on my shelf. I also remember us chatting on now defunct instant messaging platforms, and found an email correspondence from my second to last year of high school until right before I started college. Yet they don’t give me the rush of nostalgia the shoebox letters do.
We wished to fast-forward our lives yet dreaded the future. In a letter, she expresses both her sadness about the years going by, leaving us less time to meet with one another, live, be with our parents, and her enthusiasm about what grownups get to do – drive, wear make-up, change… What will we do when we’re older, she wonders, what will we look like, will we have kids, what names will we give them, who will we marry, where will we live?
After rereading the letters and putting them back in the box, I felt the need for a little more time with these two. We were thirteen when 13 going on 30 came out, a favorite comfort watch I find myself thinking about as I’m writing this. Wouldn’t it be fun to experience a real-life equivalent for a day or two, only the other way around, to wake up as your teen-age self with the hard-earned life lessons and the self-compassion you have today? I wish I could give my younger self a hug, tell her that, even though our life is not what she was dreaming of, not yet, it’s a beautiful life and we’re okay.
**
Spring has made its long-awaited entrance, granting us lighter mornings and nights nibbling away at the day a little later.
There will be cold, gray days again in the warmer months, so I got colorful spring flowers to help me feel peppier when these days arrive. I mightn’t receive adorable letters with hand-crafted gifts anymore, but my life is still filled with blessings, some unsought, and we get to give ourselves presents.
The eternal cycle of goodbyes and hellos continues. Yet let’s not forget the in-betweens and the things helping us navigate the changing seasons, the sunny and cloudy days, for they make up the larger part of our lives. After the depths of winter, spring seems to be telling us, there’s still a whole lot of living to do.
Memories © 2026 Surya Ohara
