just as soon as I finish this post...

It has been ten days since I sent my dad a letter. I guess it is time for me to sit down and write him another one. I know it has been that long because I save copies of all the letters I have sent him since we moved here. So I know that I have sent him twenty letters over the eight months we have lived here, and I know how frequently I sent them and what I wrote to him in each of them. I have not received anything in return from him, nor do I expect to. And yet, I still say, it is time for me to write my dad a letter.

When I first started writing to him, I tried to only write about things I thought he would care about or be interested in. Gradually I realized that he doesn't really care about the things I do out here and the only thing he is interested in is when I might be coming back. So. I stopped caring whether he was interested or not, and now I pretend that he is a normal person who is interested in normal things. I write him cheery, descriptive letters about our lives here. I tell him about the house and the dogs and the garden - pretty much what I write about here, actually.

To be honest, I am not entirely sure why I continue this practice. I think my letters might actually irritate my dad in some ways. I mean, we like it out here, we're doing fine, we're not planning on ever going back to Ohio (at least I'm not!) so, obviously, he doesn't want to hear about it. On the other hand, if I stopped writing to him, I think he would be pissed off about that, as well. So, yeah, damned if I do and damned if I don't. I guess the main reason I continue to write to my dad is because I think it is the right thing to do. Is there a better reason than that?

but is it communication?

I try to write a letter to my dad every ten days or so. In fact, checking my folder of letters, I see that I wrote every eleven days in December, actually, so it's time for another update. I have been holding off, waiting for the photos that Ben was going to send to Walgreen's, but they are ready to pick up now.

I sit down at my computer, adjust my font size to 14, and try to write a cheery, informative letter. I try to make it sound like I am sitting in Dad's room at Wesleyan Village, chatting with him. Frankly, when I am there I frequently wonder if I am boring him or if he is thinking what an idiot I am, so basically I wonder the same thing as I type these letters. But I persevere. I usually end up with about a page and a half of news about what Ben and I are doing, changes we are making to the house, how the kids are, and what the dogs are up to. Then I hand sign the letter and send it off.

I don't ever expect a reply, you understand. My dad used to be quite the letter writer, firing off hand-printed, single-spaced, many-paged missives to anyone who rubbed him the wrong way - and that was a lot of people. I found copies of many of these letters when I was cleaning out Dad's file cabinet before the house sold. They made me sad, though, and I threw them all away. He has been so angry for such a long time.

Dad sent me a couple of "letters" last year when I was working on getting him situated at Wesleyan Village. They were printed in pencil on torn sheets of paper, and generally were one-sentence requests or questions. He has never liked to use the telephone, you see, and only calls me under situations of duress. He hasn't called me since we moved to Maryland, and I don't believe he will. I think he thinks the phone call will be too expensive, although I tried to explain he would be calling my cell phone with the Ohio area code.

In spite of all this, I will sit here later today and write another letter. I will try to make it light-hearted and informative. I will try once again to connect with my dad. I don't know if I'm doing it for him or doing it for myself. I only know I need to do it.