Gone

February 11, 2025 — 8:44pm

Dear Reese,

I log in to an old email account today and find that everything is gone. It had been over a year since my last visit and inactivity for 12 months leads to a wipe of the inbox. Well, I know that now. That old Yahoo account was my first email ever, but it has been nearly fifteen years since I’ve used it for anything than a collector of spam emails and storage for my high school self.

Story files I sent myself, letters between the boy I loved when I was fourteen (and fifteen, and sixteen, and seventeen), the first emails exchanged between my random college roommate who became one of my best friends. Disappeared.

There’s a pang, remembering what I can never look back on again, but I take it in stride. It’s like all my old math or English notebooks with scribbled story notes and random poems. I’d keep piles of them, not wanting to lose a single scrap. But in the end, they sit in a drawer and I don’t need them. One by one they find their way to the recycle bin.

I’m a hoarder of writing, of letters, of emails — I like a record so I have fragments to turn into meaning. But I’ve already made my meaning from the person I was in that inbox. I’ve turned it into story and poetry and years’ worth of daily writing.

I guess what I’m saying, Reese, is that my heart is not broken. Sometimes, the universe gives you a sign that you need to let go of past clutter to keep making space for the present and the future.

When I put you to bed tonight I think about how the parts of my childhood that I want to keep, the things that I want to pass on, are already with me, not in old emails. I sing to you old camp songs, like I do every night, and you fall straight to sleep.

Love,

Mama