In A Family Way

After procrastination, the diversion of the holidays, and just plain laziness I gather on my part, along with a slow post office, my letter to Lady Darley finally arrived along with my Christmas gift to her sometime in January, or perhaps early February.

Dear Chris,

Thank you for your letter and photograph. It was nice to see you. I love the old-fashioned picture frame. I'm really into old-fashioned things, names, clothes, furniture.

I also sent her one of my articles from the school paper. Mysteriously, it didn't get there.

Did you forget to put in the piece you wrote on anorexia, as I couldn't find it in your parcel anywhere.

Maybe I thought I had put it in the package with the Christmas gift and left it out of the letter, when in reality it was never there to begin with.

I mentioned a new friend of mine in one of my letters and how she wanted a lot of children, something I couldn't quite wrap my head around.

Like your friend Lori, I would love to have a large family, hopefully about 3-4 children. A couple of boys and girl. I've even decided on some of their names. I like Esther, Emily, Hilary, Rosemary, Elliott, Lewis, Brenwyn, Patrick and Edward along with Lucas. But my sister's boyfriend pointed out to me that I shouldn't help the world's population explosion.

That's cold, people... just cold.

As for my writing, I'm working on a story about a lady who steal a little baby from the outside of a supermarket. When I've finished the story I'll send it to you, after being typed and re-read. I don't think I've got enough work to commit it to a literary agent. When I've got some work done I may do it.

Well as far as my plans are going I think I should be flying into Kansas City airport on about July 2nd/3rd. Then I should be staying for about a month till about August 10th. [Your friend from Raytown] said that we could go skating, horse-riding, to parties, jogging, lots of shopping, visiting places, meeting friends. I hope to have lots of fun and who knows, maybe we'd actually see each other. You know [her] friends or did. Do you think I would fit in with them? I'm looking forward to going but scared of that.

Love,
[Lady Darley]

I couldn't honestly answer Lady Darley about my friends friends. I didn't know enough to give her the straight story. And what difference did it make? At that age, it seemed like herds of young girls could hang out together with little or nothing in common and get on just fine.