Sometimes being a good mother gets in the way of being a good person.

Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.

Sometimes I think it is ... frustration with life as it is lived day to day that compels me to write such long letters to people who seldom reply in kind, if indeed they reply at all. Somehow by compressing and editing the events of my life, I infuse them with a dramatic intensity totally lacking at the time, but oddly enough I find that years later what I remember is not the event as I lived it but as I described it in a letter.

Sometimes being a good mother gets in the way of being a good person.

We are all so much more complicated than we allow ourselves to appear.

But a piece of paper can be a powerful presence. I have always had enormous respect for the written word and invariably find a letter more revealing than a face-to-face conversation. In a strange way I suspect I will get to know you better at a distance than I would if you had stayed at home.

Though my own life is filled with activity, letters encourage momentary escape into other lives, and I come back to my own with greater contentment.