To Auntie Cat, 11 March 2010

(Blogmom note: we did not get an email from RoseE today, so I am substituting this instead. Try not to worry. Just pray for her.)

RoseE writes:

"Dear Cat,

As a piece of random information, I had a dream two nights ago where we were all out visiting your family again. It was a lovely dream, very relaxed and pleasant. Your house had an automatic retractable sunshade over the back porch, and your father was showing me how to use it so I could sit in as much shade or sunshine as I pleased if I wanted to sit out there and read in the afternoon. He was speaking speaking Korean, so I couldn't understand him, but I still appreciated his kindness and courtesy. I think my subconscious has decided that Heaven must be just like a long vacation at your house. I'm sure your house is not always like heaven, inasmuch as real mortal life must go on there--but just so you know, it made a heavenly impression on me.

So that was fairly random. Sorry. My dreams are the only new fiction I get around here.

Today we got sunshine for the first time in what seems like forever--hope that summer may actually come again that there may be a day where I just feel like leaving my long, heavy green wool coat at home and enjoying an afternoon's work in just a jacket . . . or even just short sleeves. It's hard to believe there was a long, hot summer where even short sleeves seemed oppressively hot.

Not . . . it's gonna be okay. I am going to get through this winter. It will probably be gone and forgotten before the next transfer calls come. Just a few weeks. Not long. Right now, I feel like July can't come soon enough, but I know from talking to "older" sisters that when that Final Day really starts looming I'll panic and want to back-pedal, or do anything at the last minute to keep the mission from ending. (Sister Corrigan nearly turned around and came back when she reached the Seoul airport, although that might have had something to do with her plane ticket's accidentally being cancelled.) I can't extend my mission out to August, though, because Cat (younger-sister-Cat) would KILL me. And eat me. I'm both excited and afraid to see the changes that have slipped through the lines of the letters--I'm pretty sure Teancum is going to be bizarrely, disproportionately huge, seeing as I left when he was nine and now he's eleven . . . and he was always a tall kid anyway. And I'm starting to wonder about what I look like. My hair's still long, and I haven't changed the style much, and goodness only knows I'm wearing the same clothes I was when I left . . . but when Sister Yoon was looking at my book of pre-mission photographs, she exclaimed, "Chamenim, you look so different now!" She couldn't really articulate how, though. And I can't really see it. All I see is me paler from the long, sunless winter months. And my feet are warped and abused beyond all recognition, but that's not something you see in photographs, really.

Huh. Only four more months of relative normalcy in Korea before heading through the looking glass to that bizarre and fantastical placed called home, where houses don't have shoe pits or drains in the bathroom floor, and where every time I bow politely Cat's gonna hit me with a rolled-up newspaper or something. (Sister Cat again. I don't think you'd hit me with a rolled-up newspaper. Well, you might.) It all seems safely far-away now, but, y'know, so did Korea once. So did ninth transfer, and training. And look where I've up'n landed myself now.

Gosh--you got a really bizarre letter. I'm sorry. I like talking at you too much. I will try to make the next on a little saner.

Love always,

RoseE"