Spring 2022 - Correspondence

 

It’s time to revisit Barbara. The thought hit me as if winging through the frost-covered window, a voice ordering me to dig out Barbara’s letters, see what was there.

   Barbara, my childhood pen pal, died in June 1966, at the age of 16. I calculated: it was now February 11, 2008, so I’d been carrying her letters around for nearly 42 years. From my own sixteenth birthday a few months after her death, through university, career, marriage, children, and divorce, I’d safeguarded our four-year correspondence. And now, this cold morning, I obeyed the voice and tugged the black IKEA storage box from under the bed …

 


Bio:

Beth Kaplan’s new memoir, Loose Woman: My Odyssey from Lost to Found, was a finalist for the Whistler Independent Book Award. She is also the author of a biography, a memoir of the ’60s, and a guide to writing memoir which is the textbook for her courses at the University of Toronto.