Jan. 9, 1997
I have sent a Christmas letter for years to all our friends and relatives. Granted, when I first
married in 1970 and for several years thereafter, my letters were long and handwritten. This
probably explains my eventual case of carpal tunnel. I'm not sure when I finally switched to a
standardized letter, but my educated guess would be that it was whenever I bought my first
computer.
This year was no different than any other, except for one small detail: I was able to include an e- mail address and a URL. When people finally received my cards (after New Year's, of course), I began receiving e-mail from several of my cousins back in Illinois. Apparently the love of the Internet is more genetic than I thought.
I'm in touch now with some of the special people who are a part of my happier childhood memories. After so many years apart, we have reconnected. It's interesting to rediscover family as an adult.
I find it hard to grasp that my youngest cousin Diane is the mother of three and has a
master's degree. On the other hand, I imagine Sonya and Harriet grapple with a similar problem
concerning me. Having left the tight-knit family circle 27 years ago, my images of my relatives
tend to stand still in time. The occasional visits I made back home while my parents still lived in
Evanston never really changed the deep-rooted family pictures from my youth. But now we are
catching up, and it's a wonderful feeling.
