{"id":591,"date":"2021-08-16T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/?p=591"},"modified":"2023-01-16T20:59:50","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T04:59:50","slug":"the-farewell-letters-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/index.php\/2021\/08\/16\/the-farewell-letters-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Farewell Letters: Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Children We Were<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Somehow, I remember the children we were. There were days so hot we thought we\u2019d melt, so we\u2019d have watered down lemonade on the swings. You were a child when you said I couldn\u2019t play with you, but I was a child when I thought my imagination could out-wit all of you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless we played and played out on swings and slides, in the fields and maybe we\u2019d even play in the sky. Oh, we thought we were higher than the sky. Yet in years to come, I\u2019d see you higher still. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Field day by the pine tree was where we\u2019d play. Boys were gross then and we thought there was no such thing as money or greed. Could we share everything? Sometimes we\u2019d go to vividly colored amusement parks and be glad there were no bright lights in the hallway where everything smelled like chalk and new watercolor paints. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cried the day I had to leave elementary school, did you know?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we became afraid of the failures to come. When we were afraid we\u2019d make forts like the ones with trees in the woods. I wrote stories about those forts\u2014<\/strong>oh, I still remember every single one of them. So, we didn\u2019t know that forts were protective, but protection they still are, even as they sit in our hearts protecting the secrets we never imagined at first. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I found the pond where the trees weren\u2019t brown but grey\u2014<\/strong>I\u2019ll tell you again and again that I saw two reflections every day. Sometimes those images were alive with dreams and sometimes with devastating nightmares. I think we could survive these in storybooks but others we have yet to discover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But yet, at the pond where the boards would creak and we would look for frogs, that was where stories started and where dances of reality played in the mirror-waters. These were the places that embodied the nature of April and the Midwest rains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Literacy and fluency dance and sing and they move the sea and the land, did you know? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I became something different by day and by night\u2014<\/strong>or so I thought. Worlds were filled with words from the tile floors and glass hallways when those girls\u2014<\/strong>I thought they were my friends\u2014<\/strong>they would laugh and laugh. I stopped riding the bus and dreamed of the water. I stopped making up fantasies and made them tangible instead. I wrote pages and I danced through sentences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the stories and fantasies are fragments and images\u2014<\/strong>maybe they\u2019re particles and they\u2019ll never fit again\u2014<\/strong>but nonetheless I just see sunshine and I see attempts to hide all those forts protecting every crevice of my heart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I used to think that ice water could cure everything. I skinned my knee on the gravel driveway and lost count of how many times I sprained my ankles. I stressed out about summer jobs so I started making my ice water with mint and lemon because it could cure all the worries and stresses with just a few extra vitamins. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was just a child looking for someone to hold me, did you know?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the summer heat and our buttoned up shirts, we let the bonfire smother. Fireworks were worth more than seeing the dew the next morning. The trees were so tall there and I dream every night of the dining halls and the lights in the rainy nights where flashlights were the only safeguards against the night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a place where I fit and every lost fragment and particle reclaimed the days people said \u201cyou can\u2019t play,\u201d into memories of my friends and when they comforted me saying \u201cit\u2019s okay, you\u2019re okay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, the summers collected themselves into pictures we\u2019d rarely see and people we\u2019d never leave. Now those summers remind me of rainstorms that made the trees darker and the days brighter and brighter. Those were the summers that I thought the world was infinite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somewhere in the future, we\u2019re looking back on this moment and every moment into infinity and realizing just how  beautiful it all is.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This \u201ccollection of letters\u201d is a four part series of prose poetry that addresses both my reflections on the past and my hopes for the future. In this first complete letter, I am reflecting on my childhood as an adult. With these reflections, I am able to pull the puzzle of my life a part and yet, also bring it together. … Continue readingThe Farewell Letters: Part 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,80],"tags":[83,82,84,81,12],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","category-the-farewell-letters","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-prose","tag-the-farewell-letters","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771,"href":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions\/771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lanafreitas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}