Letters from Home

I spent all of yesterday sitting on the ground prying rocks out of the mud.

I’m still working with my friend Mary on her gardening and this gardening business is tougher than I was led to understand. I was tasked with the job of creating a shallow trench that ran the length of a walkway so we could lay in paving stones. The ironic thing (“ironic” being a more polite word than “irritating,” “frustrating,” or “infuriating”) was that in order to make room for the stones I had to remove a lot of stones. These stones, buried in the mud, had been there a long time.

Working close to the river, I was in what had been the riverbed a few thousand years ago. I was prying loose rocks that had been tumbled in water until they sunk to the bottom of the river. I could almost see how the current had packed them tightly together as I acted like a counter-current and tried (with slow but eventual success) to unearth them and toss them out of their primeval home. The stones did not appear to be in favor of the move.

Each stone I removed revealed another stone, buried beneath the topsoil and sand. I dug the stone with my shovel, my trowel, and eventually my hands until I was able to extricate it from its home. Then I found another stone.

My annoyance with the number of stones faded once I understood that I was actually in the riverbed, sitting on the bottom of an ancient river. Of course there were stones. I imagined deep waters flowing over these rocks and unseen fish swimming over my head. The stones, I realized, were beautiful and would have been even more so underwater. Deep red and greenish blue, they had been tumbled smooth and randomly mixed together wherever the fierce currents had deposited them long ago.

Sitting in the mud, I imagined the ancient river that used to be. Painstakingly removing stone after stone, I thought of how much I missed hidden beneath a thin layer of topsoil.

I wrote last week that writing honestly about my private life is just an admission that I am going through the messy and imperfect process of being human— and this is true. But something else happens, I have noticed, when I freely talk about the currents that have tumbled me about over the years. In revealing myself, I become more aware of how we all have a deep layer of colorful, tumbled rock lying beneath the surface. By peeking beneath my own thin layer of topsoil, I become more empathetic to the fierce and secret joys and sorrows that create the riverbed of our experience.

In my relationship with Daniel, it is not enough to know where the big stones are buried. It also helps to appreciate that those stones did not get there by magic. Strong currents made him who he is today. By respecting and understanding this past, I become less annoyed if I stumble over a rock when I was expecting soft soil.

Imagining that long-ago river raging where daffodils now bloom replaces impatience with compassion. Remembering there are rocks buried just beneath, I am better able to imagine the strong currents that brought these rocks to their current resting place.

Late in the afternoon, covered in mud, I was greeted by a woman who had been watching my labors.

“When you dig up an old riverbed you’re gonna find some rocks,” she said.

That’s just what I was thinking.

Till next time,

—Carrie

I once took a bus from Kenya to Tanzania. The bus was overcrowded. The paved road ended after a few miles and the road we traveled was under construction. There was no air conditioning, so we had to keep the windows open. Everyone on the crowded bus was covered in sweat and soon became covered in red dust. Eventually, we came to the border crossing as we exited Kenya and got our passports stamped. We re-boarded the bus and bumped along for another half hour before we got out and had our passports stamped again as we entered Tanzania.

I never knew where I was for that half hour between borders, but I feel like I have been between borders for a while now.

Being neither in nor out of a relationship is an awkward place to be. Admitting that there is a space between “me” and “we” is hard. Figuring out where the boundaries are is tricky. The temptation to ignore the warning signs in order to keep the peace, maintain the status quo, enjoy one more day together, is powerful. I had to roll along a dusty road for quite a while before I finally conceded that Daniel and I were no longer in “we,” but I had crossed the border into “me.”

Added to the discomfort was the feeling that I had to explain the sudden disappearance of someone who had been an integral part of my columns for more than two years. If this was fiction, I would create a snazzy finish in which the “Daniel” character disappeared (perhaps to pursue a movie deal or a star in a series on another network). I would have his car careen off a cliff after a high-speed chase, have him kidnapped by the mafia, or contract a rare but terminal disease (which would in no way affect his leading-man looks). Fortunately for both Daniel and my karma, I have never wished any of these fates on the real Daniel.

But after spending a bit of time in the country of “me,” a funny thing happened. Both Daniel and I realized how much we missed and valued our time in “we.”

A return visit confirmed it.

So we are traveling together again. There is of course a risk in saying too much too soon. But I decided some time ago that there was nothing in my life that was so remarkable that most people would not have gone through something similar. Writing honestly about my private life is just an admission that I am going through the messy and imperfect process of being human.

Daniel says we learn the biggest lessons while in a relationship and I think he is right. I have certainly learned a lot in this one. I came into the relationship with a little baggage and so did he. (Little did we suspect that we would end up with matching luggage.)

It may be that neither of us was quite as ready for a serious relationship as we thought. But, like a lot of journeys, if I waited for the perfect time I would never go anywhere. Daniel and I started out with some preconceptions, some misconceptions, and a whole lot of imperfections. Somehow, we survived it all by doing just one thing well.

We talk.

Conversation makes the journey from “me” to “we” easier and the border less forbidding. I would be foolish to say I know how this journey ends so I will end here.

And we’re still talking.

Till next time,

—Carrie

I’m pretty sure that most things that matter in life can be learned in a garden.

My friend Mary is letting me help in her garden. I am a fairly inept gardener’s assistant. My mother and sister are wonderful gardeners as was my grandmother. I have long harbored the suspicion that gardening (like mechanical engineering and mathematics) skipped over me when talents were being handed out. Mary is a Master Gardener and her usual corps of teenage assistants are not yet available, so Mary is allowing me to help her reduce the weeds growing rampant in this peculiar early spring. I like it.

I sit in the dirt and pull up little weeds and break off dead stems and have a fine time. Mary gives me very detailed instructions on what to pull up and what to leave because I am not very good at identifying what is supposed to be growing and what is our enemy. I have accidentally pulled up a few things I was not supposed to, usually when their roots became entwined around dead stalks that I pulled with a little too much gusto. But far more often my mistake is to leave growing what should not be there. That is one of the many things a Master Gardener knows that I do not.

I grow fond of the little green shoots sticking up between the rocks or under a larger plant and I find it hard to believe I am supposed to uproot the harmless little things. Only with Mary’s insistence do I yank them up. I have been astonished to learn that Mary even pulls out plants she likes because there are too many of them or they are in the wrong place, making it hard for something else to grow.

This is why there is so much to learn in a garden.

I have been trying to become a better gardener in my own life. I see little weeds in my life at every turn and often I am just as reluctant to pull them up— especially when they are still small, innocent-looking shoots.

My friends tell me that I have an astonishing capacity to ignore unpleasant truths. I think this is because these truths usually begin very small and I simply fail to notice them until they have become towering thistles blocking out the sun. Niggling fears of confrontation are left to grow when they could have been nipped out immediately. Difficult conversations, hard questions— all are so much easier to pluck when they are tiny weeds than after they’ve become large and deeply rooted.

A master gardener knows that it is not just removing the weed that is important, so is making room for the plants she wants to grow. Weeds take up space and consume energy. Weeds move into the sunlight and block it from the plants she is trying to encourage. Some plants might be welcome in the right environment, but a wise gardener knows when they do and do not belong and the sooner they are weeded the better the garden will be.

Again and again I am amazed how doing something briefly unpleasant, or facing an uncomfortable reality, frees me to be more creative, more carefree, more alive. Suddenly I feel I am getting my share of the sun. I am freer to grow.

By the end of the day I had pulled out buckets of weeds. It kept getting easier the longer I did it. I’m thinking, with a little practice, I might not be such a bad gardener after all.

Till next time,

—Carrie

I went to see Madame Butterfly this week.

For those of you who don’t know the story (and I didn’t), it is about a Japanese geisha in the early 1900s. In the first act she marries an American naval lieutenant, in an arrangement that he thinks is temporary and she believes is permanent. (A rather major misunderstanding it would seem to me.) As the second act opens, he has been gone for three years. She is running low on money and has a three-year-old child but is steadfastly insisting he will return for her. He does return, with a wife who offers to adopt the child. When Madame Butterfly realizes that he is truly gone for good, she stabs herself and Lieutenant Pinkerton returns just as she dies.

I went to a matinee and the theater was filled with flocks of brightly-clothed teenaged girls. It was fun to see them all dressed up for the opera in jazzy short skirts and flowing gypsy dresses, platform heels and high-top sneakers. They were wildly talkative during intermission and dead quiet during the play’s action. When the lights came up at the end I was surprised (and touched) to see that they had all been crying.

I watched the red-eyed teenagers file out the front door to their waiting buses and I wondered, why was this old story still so popular? And why were all these teenage girls crying?

Later in the week, I agreed to testify in my ex-husband’s custody hearing. My ex-husband and his new ex-wife are battling for custody of their three-year-old son and I was asked to serve as a character witness to testify that he is a good and caring person, which he is. The attorney for the new ex-wife tried valiantly to unearth some nefarious reason I must have for providing my testimony. The interrogation was not fun and something I hope never to do again.

But I am glad I did it.

As I waited for the trial to begin, I thought of Madame Butterfly and wondered why she was still so popular. Madame Butterfly is a cautionary tale about inappropriate love, about love that defies convention and leads to destruction. But no one takes this message out of the theater. She made some poor choices, her husband left her, she was a victim of both her culture and cultural imperialism. But none of this had anything to do with why the girls were crying.

I think I know now why the play still works, but I would suggest a few small revisions.

If I could rewrite Madame Butterfly (just a little), I would would take the knife out of her hands. She would wave goodbye to Lieutenant Pinkerton and his pretty new wife and, after a lot of crying, a little screaming, and some quality time with her girlfriends, she would realize what those teenage girls and I already know.

Inside this old melodrama is a truth we all recognize: love ennobles us. Love exalts us. Love makes us larger people and makes life worth living. Love is its own reward. Those young girls— and this not-so-young one— believe that even though her love did not turn out well (and really, it is hard to imagine a love working out worse than it did for Madame Butterfly), she chose wisely because she chose love. And she would do it all again.

Then maybe, in a few years, she would be asked to testify in a nasty custody battle between Lieutenant Pinkerton and his new ex-wife.

She would agree, of course.

Till next time,

—Carrie

Since I had my old bicycle up and running, I decided it was time to get on my bike and ride.

Freshly inspired by my biking in the Florida sunshine, I figured that riding to church would be a good idea. So I dressed up in my Sunday’s best and hopped on my cycle for what I figured would be about an hour’s ride.

It was a little more than that.

The trail was not paved and so I didn’t make the time I estimated. There were piles of leaves and debris still left on the trail from the spring thaw that I needed to plow through. I had neglected to roll my skirt up around my waist and instead left it fluttering behind me until it got firmly wedged between the back wheel and the brake pad and had to be ripped loose in pieces. It was also colder than I thought, with patches of frost alongside the trail.

By the time I made it to church, I had been peddling hard for an hour and a half, the bells were just starting to ring in the church tower, and I had no time to tidy myself up. I hung my helmet around my handlebars and raced to the church door, only then realizing that my feet had gone completely numb from the cold.

With my ripped skirt dangling behind me and my hair poking out in every which direction, I stumbled into the church on wooden feet, looking like an inebriate.

“How nice to see you,” the pastor said. (I’m pretty sure she’s paid to say that.)

But I enjoyed the service once my feet regained feeling. I was able to stand by the time I was asked to walk up to the communion rail, wondering how many people were taking note of the detached skirt hem snaking behind me. It felt good to know I had made it there on my own power and, despite the mishaps, I knew that the next ride would be better.

Sometimes I just need to get on my bike and ride.

I started to run in my mid-thirties when I noticed I was developing a little paunch around my middle that I had not granted a residence permit. Alarmed, I decided that I should start running. On the first day out, I ran nearly four miles. The next day climbing the stairs to the second floor of my house felt like an assault up K2. I’ve since learned that this is not the recommended way to start running, but I’m not sure if I’d have had the patience to do it any other way. I still run. I don’t run fast or far, but I run.

Television news is filled with stories of people who ventured to places and tried new adventures ill-prepared, without sufficient money, training, or electronic gadgets to ensure their survival in a hostile forest, sea, jungle, neighborhood, or shopping mall. But much more common and less reported, I think, is the person who just tries the new activity or adventure, makes a few mistakes and keeps trying. You can always buy better shoes. You can’t retrieve a day once it is over.

Riding home from church, my skirt securely rolled around my middle, the sun was warm. I enjoyed the smell of the farms and fields as I peddled past. I imagined I would be a little sore tomorrow, but my trepidation about riding had faded.

The next time it will be even easier to get on my bike and ride.

Till next time,

—Carrie

Back home from Florida, everyone seems to be making the adjustment pretty well.

Milo was happy to see my truck pull up the drive. He had been spending his vacation with two female black labs who live on a farm. On the first day he was there he chased the free-range chickens with sufficient skill to extract a mouthful of tail feathers, but he behaved himself after that. He was a little afraid of the cats at first (these were farm cats after all). But by the time I came to pick him up he had grown accustomed to the cats, ignored the hens, and was best buddies with the two labs. When he jumped into my truck, the younger of the two labs tried to leap in and come home with him.

Lucy was also glad to see me, although her reasons had less to do with me than with her diet. My good friend Judy had visited Lucy regularly so she was not lacking for companionship. But I had failed to make clear that there were two large buckets of pet food and one of them was not cat food. Lucy ran to her bowl, looked at me and wailed. When I protested that the bowl was full, she wailed louder. When I left the room, she followed me and wailed. Only when I picked up the bowl to examine it closely did I discover the cause of her displeasure. Of all the indignities Lucy has suffered, she seemed to feel that eating dog food ranked near the top.

The thing about a vacation is that, like Lucy’s change of diet and Milo’s new friends, being away allows me to see my old home in a new way and both appreciate the things I have, and resolve to make some changes that make the rest of my life more like vacation life.

On vacation, meals take on more importance. The day is often centered around a new thing I want to cook for my family or fresh vegetables my brother-in-law found at the market. If we go out to eat, the decision takes on more weight; going to one restaurant means we cannot go to another. Celebrating meals is a wonderful thing— and I don’t find myself eating any more than I otherwise would.

On vacation, it seems easier to try new things and do things just for fun. I have a nice bicycle and I never ride it. It has been sitting in the barn so long that the tires are flat. On vacation, I borrowed my mother’s old three-speed bike and remembered how much I liked to ride.

On vacation, I take more time to really talk to people. I take the time to visit my aunt and my former in-laws. I sit with my dad and talk for no particular reason and with nothing else I feel I should be doing. On vacation it seems easier to give myself permission to say, “I’d like to talk to you. Can I come over?”

As soon as I got home, I prepared myself a nice dinner— just for me— and ate it in the late afternoon sun. I called up my parents for no reason other than to let them know that Milo and Lucy had survived and tell them again how much I’d enjoyed the time.

Then, just before I went to bed, I filled up the tires on my bike, dusted it off, and took it for a spin around the neighborhood, ringing the bell occasionally, just for fun.

Till next time,

—Carrie

For the past week I’ve been hanging out with retired people.

I’ve been visiting both my parents and my former in-laws in Florida. They have moved to retirement parks in different parts of the state and I have had a great opportunity to observe the Florida retirement lifestyle at close range. It is fascinating how these Florida transplants have acclimated to their new, sunny home after having spent their working lives in much colder places far away.

Some residents make their new home an homage to the old. They have familiar furnishings indoors and out and join clubs populated exclusively by former residents from their home state. Others embrace Florida entirely, with thoroughly Floridian decor in shades of pastel pink. All the residents seem busier and friendlier than people in most neighborhoods. Everyone is always rushing off to one of the myriad of activities that are organized in the clubhouse or at the pool. My former in-laws choose from a list of weekly activities organized in half hour increments that fills five single-spaced pages. There are fine arts classes and dragon boats, community theater and fishing club, rummage sales and yoga, lapidary and lectures on global warming.

Retirees dash off to the ice cream social, barbeque, classical concert, and pickleball picnic. Everyone waves as they zip off to their activities on bicycle or by golf cart. The activities are all optional. The waving appears to be mandatory.

I’ve been having a wonderful time. I learned to drive a golf cart, danced with my niece Isabelle at the evening drum circle, and went to the beach with my nephew, Beau. Beau remains skeptical about the ocean. He saw the ocean last year when he was here and declared it “too wet” for his taste. He remains unconvinced this year and prefers to sit on the sand wearing oversized dark sunglasses and digging with a shovel.

I took a long walk this morning, before the sun became too hot and wondered whether I will experience a retirement that in any way resembles what these Florida retirees have. It seems doubtful, as I am beginning an entirely new career at just about the time that I should be putting down a deposit for a retirement home. I wonder how many people my age will actually retire in the way my parents and their cheerful neighbors have.

But whether or not I ever experience retirement in the same way, I think there is a lot to learn from these Florida transplants and the new lives they have made for themselves. The move to a smaller, metal house has meant downsizing and prioritizing what they carry with them. These northern emigrants seem to have recognized this move south as an important life transition and made conscious choices about what from their former lives they choose to bring along and what they leave behind. They are expressing passions and interests they have cultivated over decades and they are learning the rules of pickleball— all in the course of one busy day.

With less things and more time, they seem to have distilled their lives and become more of who they really are. These retirees have created a life that honors what is most important: time to enjoy the things that matter.

I walked along the beach, watching the lowering sun shine through the green-blue curl of a wave before it hit the shore and washed over my feet in sparkling white foam. The temperature was perfect, the beach was uncrowded, and the water was just wet enough for my taste.

Till next time,

—Carrie

I like to fly.

I know this is not a fashionable thing to say. The fashionable thing to say is how crowded and uncomfortable flying has become, how air travel lacks charm and grace nowadays and how it used to be so much better. I suppose this is true, but I like to fly.

In recent years, most of the flying I did was overseas and international flights have changed less, perhaps, than domestic. I was startled the first time I was asked if I wanted to buy food (no) and told that I would be charged if I checked my bag (I didn’t). I found it somewhat alarming to see motion sickness pills advertised on my tray table and hear flight attendants hawking catalog goods. But, these changes notwithstanding, I still like to fly.

I like the feel of an aircraft taking off, the precise moment I realize the wheels are no longer connecting me to the earth and that peculiar magic called flying has begun. I never grow tired of seeing clouds from the topside, or watching the scattered lights on a landscape far below.

My parents perch at least three months of the year in a little Florida compound near the sea. Everyone lives in a tiny metal house and scoots around on a single speed bicycle. The residents are quiet and the birds are noisy and the houses are kept cool by giant pine trees draped in Spanish moss.

I hadn’t been to Florida for a number of years. My parents invited me to come down to visit and escape this unsettling Midwestern heat in Florida, where March heat is at least expected. My spring has been filled with loneliness and uncertainty. Florida sounded good.

This meant leaving my dog Milo and cat Lucy behind. Lucy was not a problem. Lucy spends twenty-two of her twenty-four available hours fast asleep. Of course, she would prefer to come along; Lucy saw my suitcase and immediately climbed in— and fell asleep. My friend, Judy, comes by to wake her up occasionally and let her know that she has not been completely abandoned.

But Milo needed a place to stay. I finally located a small farm with two female labs where he could spend his vacation. One lab was very old with a gray muzzle and named Baby. Baby growls constantly but not out of displeasure. Like me, she is apparently is making a sort of running commentary on her life. The younger lab took an instant liking to Milo, pounded her paws on the ground, and insisted they get down to the serious business of play. When Milo was distracted by the growling and ground pounding I threw the truck into reverse and headed speedily down the driveway — but not fast enough.

Milo saw the truck start to move and ran after me with a panicked look that said, “You almost forgot me!” My heart lurched as I handed the leash to the kind woman who would be watching him and pulled down the driveway and out of sight.

Watching the sun filter through clouds, I enjoyed a bit of turbulence as the warm, moist clouds pounded against the plane, asking to play. When we broke through the clouds to a higher altitude I felt the familiar mixture of freedom and powerlessness I always feel when I am in the air. The reality of how much occurs far above me becomes abundantly clear. When I am flying, all I can do is feel the sunshine in my face and enjoy the ride.

Till next time,

—Carrie

Woody emerged from the woods behind the barn, which seemed appropriate.

My dog Milo, who had not seen Woody in a year, barked nervously at this intruder emerging from the forest until Woody called his name.

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Milo remembered, “the guy who sneaks around behind the maple trees.”

Woody had come to see about tapping my trees and of course I said it was alright. Woody hangs buckets on a few of my oldest maple trees and I get a big jug of syrup out of the deal. But this year, it is less certain. The days are too warm and the nights are not freezing. Without the freezing nights, the sap won’t flow and there will be no maple syrup this season.

“Have you ever seen a winter like this?” Woody inquired. I had to admit I had not.

“Strange weather.”

The local church youth group makes most of their annual budget tapping trees, a few trees here and a few there all over the community, until they end up with an astonishing haul of sap which they boil down, bottle, and sell to parishioners and neighbors. The youth group leader is worried. No buckets are hanging yet. No sap is flowing.

The sugar shack men, who sit long hours watching sap boil down to one fortieth its volume, are checking the long term weather forecasts and making dour prognostications but nobody knows for sure. If the trees bud out, they say, it will be too late and there will be no syrup this year. If the trees bud out and then it freezes, that will be bad for the orchards. They watch their thermometers and compare notes.

“Strange weather,” the sugar shack men agree.

This winter that never became a real winter is now becoming a spring that is not a normal spring. It is unsettling for the sugar shack men and me. We expect the seasons to follow some sort of reasonable order and have an expected outcome. March is the month when winter storms come and they blow over. We do not get comfortable in a March thaw because we have learned that March is a month of changes and change is the norm. Every March, snow falls and then it melts. The weather warms and freezes again. The sap flows and gallons are distilled into sweet amber pints. Then the cycle repeats the following year.

My expectations of love are similar. I expect love to follow some sort of time honored principles. I expect it to look and conduct itself in a certain way. Even though it is at times tumultuous, I am confident that love has a season of its own and follows rules that are bigger than me and more lasting. Even if there is a temporary disruption, I reason, love will return. I expect that love, given enough time, will ultimately distill to a sweet nectar.

Instead, I find that love does not look or behave the way I expect this season. In this strange weather, I am looking for signs of a return to the sweet and familiar. As unsettled and speculative as the sugar shack men, I’m making my own prognostications which vary by the hour.

The sound of geese flying low woke me this morning before the sun was up. I stepped outside and looked at the moon still hanging in the sky. A strong wind was blowing from the south. I stood in my pajamas and felt a warm March wind blowing in my face.

Till next time,

—Carrie

I remember the first time someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I didn’t have an answer, but the question left quite an impression. I clearly remember climbing through the tall meadow grass (which may not have been as tall as I remember) contemplating the seemingly endless possible ways to answer that question.

“I could be a firefighter,” I distinctly remember thinking.

“I could be a ghost!” came shortly thereafter and I did, in fact, don a bed sheet the following Halloween. To this day, the line between gainful employment and a really good costume has remained fuzzy.

Eventually, I did learn that there were limitations on my seemingly infinite number of career choices. Anything involving either dexterity or mathematics was ruled out rather early. But even after gymnastics and astrophysics were eliminated, there were still a lot of options. I don’t think I’ve ever outgrown the initial awe I felt. It still amazes me that after two (and a half) careers I have the opportunity to try something new, to throw another bed sheet over my head and see what it feels like.

The first of the rejection and acceptance letters from graduate schools are arriving by mail, e-mail, and phone. I have been watching my mailbox with an unaccustomed intensity. I have made note of my mail carrier’s habits and his route. (I have noted that he arrives slightly later on Saturday and wondered why this is.) The mail is delivered at the end of my long, muddy driveway and I have been known to slip on my rubber boots and visit the mailbox as many as three times in the course of a day. There were some early and (to my sensitive soul) brusk rejections, but there were also two offers of tuition and semi-gainful employment teaching undergraduates while I pursue a graduate degree in an entirely new field. It seems like an amazing sort of carnival trick.

The act of reinvention is a peculiarly American one. The right to don a new costume at midlife seems almost to be a birthright in the United States. We love stories of entrepreneurs and inventors, barbeque sauce recipes and iPad applications that turn their creators into overnight sensations. We love executives who become teachers, teachers who become organic farmers, and organic farmers who become executives. The whole idea of taking a skill set from one life experience and applying it to an entirely new profession seems to bring a new passion and energy to the endeavor. And this is the way I feel most of the time.

But occasionally I am reminded that I will be significantly older than the other students. I wonder if I will feel foolish. I wonder if I will regret not beginning this journey earlier. I wonder if I will be taken seriously. I wonder if it is financial madness to begin anew this late in the game.

My dog Milo eyes me quizzically as I pull on my rubber boots to make my second trip in an hour to the mailbox. I trudge through the spring mud to the end of the drive. Only an advertisement and a magazine today, no new rejections to recover from or new offers to consider. I head back to the house.

I’ve decided to accept foolishness, if that is what this is. I am excited by this new chance to decide what I want to be when I grow up. I still remember how much fun it was when I got to be a ghost.

Till next time,

—Carrie