The Letter

I received a letter via snail mail yesterday from my cousin, Tom, who lives near Fargo.
When we were kids, I used to torment the living hell out of him. Tom's sister, Karey, and I would regularly give him atomic hanging wedgies, and commit other heinous acts 'big sisters' often do.

It's all part of having an extremely large family and even larger extended family. Beating up on siblings/cousins was just part of the daily routine. Us middle kids needed an outlet for the hazings we got from the older ones. So, Tom was one of our scapegoat targets for us being he was further down in the family pecking order.

My name for Tom when we were kids was "Spazmodic Twit" which eventually got shortened to just one-syllable "Spaz." To be perfectly honest, Tom should hate my guts. Frankly, I'm surprised he is still speaking to me.

Fast forward a few years. Tom's sister, Karey, dies in a car accident when I was 16 and Tom was 14. I did not realize it at the time, but I was the closest thing to Karey that Tom had, being Karey and I were extremely close. Tom was missing his sister in a big way. I was a teenager myself trying to deal with the sudden loss, and I became lost and confused within myself not even conscious of what Tom was dealing with.

Fast forward a few more years. Tom's parents pass away, the siblings/cousins grow up, get married, and have their own families. The once full house that was the epicenter of activity where many of our childhood memories were created out on the Dakota prarie is now unoccupied.

Fast forward to today. Tom's letter arrives in my mailbox amid real estate flyers, coupons, and other non-essential, non-personal trivial junk mail items. Tom's letter immediately brings a flush of warm memories to life -- and I have not even opened it yet. Just seeing who it was from and the return address of North Dakota was enough for me.

I bring the letter into the kitchen. Is Tom going to curse me out for the many atomic hanging wedgies he received as a kid from me? Is he going to spew at me for the years of therapy he endured trying to elimiate the nickname "Spaz" from his consciousness?

No... Tom writes me of how he is home with his youngest son as he has strep throat. He writes in his own personal chicken-scratch style of how he can't remember the last time he actually wrote a letter to anybody. There was no e-mail, no IM, no Facebook, or no other electronic cheating used.

He wrote a letter to me. He wrote an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned letter -- complete with the hodge podge stamps being the postage rate went up yet againl