Letters of Love: 1999

Who was I in 1999?

I don’t know.

In the days before MySpace and Facebook and cell phones and Insta-everything we didn’t capture all our glory and post for the world to see in 1999.

There aren’t any videos or well-posed filtered photos of me at 19. 

I don’t even know if “selfies” were a thing. 

But thanks to my bestest for digging through her personal archives, she texted me these photos from 99’- taken while we were in Spain when she came to visit me during my study abroad:

These old photos that made me cringe, only momentarily, and then smile.

The big, wide grin that transports you back to a time long ago, in a galaxy not so far away.

I wondered why I was pale.

I wondered if all of us gals had on shirts we’d bought from Zara- the one just near la Plaza Mayor. 

I wondered if Maria’s hair can still get that big and curly (can it, Maria?)

I wondered why I always covered the freckles on my nose- in 1999 and today.

I wondered where my eyebrows were (damn you, Gwen Stefani for making thin eyebrows a thing back then!)

And then-

She texted me the photo of the envelope that contained A handwritten letter I wrote to her all those years ago. 

I could handle the late-90’s zero-brow photos better than seeing the envelope.  

The envelope is what made me feel a strange sense of shame.  An almost... embarrassment.  

To see my own writing, the choice of a quote that I likely thought was so befitting of my bestest friend, the well-placed whimsical sticker of Flit (from “Bug’s Life”, by the way) and remembering, vividly, all the letters I wrote while I was in Spain- to my family and friends.  

I was at the Post Office often.  I spent a highly disproportionate amount of money on stamps for letters to the U.S. and I remember the postal worker telling me I shouldn’t have chosen yellow envelopes because they cost more.... and of course; my letters were never a single page.  Front-and-back and side-to-side, like a hip hop dance across paper.

The limited amount of money I’d saved from working at Bullwinkles was splurged at the post office on stamps. 

That’s normal for a 19 year old.... right?

I suppose it felt shameful because I don’t know that I’ve grown up at all. 

Nearly 20 years later and I can still get lost among stationary and whimsy and words and quotes and cards and unsolicited text messages and writing out my Christmas card list (through let’s be honest, some years of late I don’t quite get around to sending those!).

And I don’t know, aside from my best friend, if any of the other letters I’ve written, or cards I’ve sent, have been saved. 

And maybe this is it-

This is what it’s all for. 

To know that among the 1000’s of cards and letters and texts and emails and voicemails and blogs there are ones that are saved and remembered and re-read while digging through a box at a childhood home. 

The ones that matter as much to the recipient as they did to the writer. 

The ones that were saved. 

And maybe this is why, since the age of 11, Maria’s been my best friend! 

Because she appreciates the weight of the envelope and everything inside.

And my shame eases a bit knowing that, although I might not have grown up too much and some of my habits and interests have been static and unchanged, maybe Maria is also still a little bit 19, just around 39. 

And maybe, just maybe, there are worse things than a love of stationary and words...

(Like too-skinny eyebrows and covering up nose-freckles and drinking Jose Cuervo)