words from home

I don’t know about y’all, but I love reading these posts. Many of you probably know that in the very beginning of our friendship, Caitlin and I did a LOT of writing together. We met at a school we were both working at and as summer began, we decided to start our own writing group, just the two of us. We agreed we would write for 10 minutes every day, and send that writing via email to one another. I looked forward to reading her words every day. Sometimes we’d exchange emails beyond that, usually related to what one of us had written. After a while I asked, “Do you do texting?” which now seems hilarious to me, knowing how very much Caitlin texts, and also because it NOW feels like, doesn’t everyone text?

And of course she said, “Yes, absolutely,” and the texting began. We texted so many, many times a day. I used to use an app that allowed me to download my texts and seriously there were thousands of texts before we even began officially “dating” or whatever you want to call it. Speaking for myself, all those words were a real part of falling in love.

We moved in together when the shelter-in-place started in California (thinking it was going to be ‘just a few weeks’) and the texting mostly stopped. I mean, we did still sometimes text each other from the other room when we were each online, working. Sometimes texts were like, What is going on in there?! or Would you please get the dog out of my area?

Fast forward to today and living together means that most of our communication these days is spoken (unless I’m out of town). There are still SO MANY WORDS. We talk a lot! We both have things to say and of course, Maite has plenty she wants to say, too.

And we still write together, although nowadays at the end of a writing sprint, I usually read what I wrote aloud and Caitlin usually makes me wait till the piece she is working on is done. Which means I get to read a lot fewer words on a regular basis, so reading these along with y’all is a real treat for me. I love her turn of phrase and have laughed out loud for real with each of these posts. I love to read what’s going on in her mind in conversations. (I miss those FB posts about things her students said to her!) And I am glad to read about how it’s going out there as she does her thing in a completely unknown place. Bonus points to the person who added those Oreos to her ice cream.