A Narrator's Word

Arriving directly to this instant, I would guess at your sense of being unprepared, and your jitters would not be wrong in shying you away. I implore you, dear reader, to stay. I never have nor will I promise you of anything in regards to the story of our dear adventuress as it is not my place to make promises, but I extend to you a hunch of mine own, a suspicion that your unpreparedness will be not so harshly punished.

Again, rather than chewing till the marrow's dry, I shall straight away begin at the end of your readiness. This lady of ours, dear reader, is naught to me but a neighbor. I've never once yet written her, nor did we share many cups to drink together prior to her adventuring. She made me once this shawl, which I have worn rather regularly to save me from the chill of a draft I had once to her mentioned in passing. It was a gesture kind and unexpected never thereafter followed upon in further acts of generosity, until she packed her satchel, and kissed both cheeks of mine. She asked with a smile if I would receive a letter or two from her. I agreed to hold her keys and mind her car, as any kindly neighbor would, and with a bit of surprise accepted her letters, thinking them harmless at best.

Without admitting as much as the esteem in that I hold these letters, I suspect I needn't make overly clear how dear the darling girl has become to me, and what's more! how changed my days have been by these silly notes. Indeed I've seen my own pantry translate itself slowly; and the coffee table previously piled with bills, television remotes with dead batteries, and dirty tea cups; is now stacked in piles of her letters sidewise to the books she's recommended, and I do dare admit to waking brighter, smiling wider at the post-man, humming in the kitchen, and indeed practicing my penmanship and typing hand! I feel as a gift to her, and she to me, even considering my windshield ice-scraping duty.

Over years of quiet neighborhood, a cup of sugar or an egg from one to another and this stretch of pen-friendship, it would not be fitting from my position with her shawl wrapped round my shoulders to remark upon the exactness of her words. The words themselves would do little indeed to show you what I've seen, but there has been a shift in her as the letters arrive sometimes in swarms and then dripping drop by drop, again in throngs at my mailbox and then dry for days. I have seen her change her seeing, or her seeing being changed; I can't be sure which of the two or if there is indeed a difference.

Though her penmanship and choice of ink have varied very little; her vocabulary fluctuating as any person is wont to do between profane and delicate; she still dances round the questions which she so wants to ask, but there is something of the temperament in which she grasps the pen, something in the pace of her writing evident nowhere on the page but within it. Something, I venture, is different.

Now that you know that I don't know her well, and take, I expect, some grains of salt with all that I share, I do hope that your generous gut would grant you the fancy of belief in the face of doubt. For the sake of our lady and the letters she writes, I should hope there'd be someone worth their witness of this. That she is happy. And despite my position held in confidence and security,  I should wish that her life be borne a greater audience than an old lady in a shawl counting down to an oil change.

That the girl has met with cliches, and poor understandings, small children, great food, loneliness, and surprises. And she sits down to write with greater patience than ever. And she spells out these phrases one letter at a time, saying things like, "I am worthy of my own trust," and "Variety gives us our dignity," and "A word is made more of pronunciation than it is of letters," and she kisses tombstones and she laughs; she makes me laugh.