In the summer of 1991 I would have been six years old. I had just learned to write. For whatever reason that summer, my sister and I were obsessed with the idea of passing notes. So we took turns sitting in the downstairs bathroom with a pack of crayons and a stack of papers, writing notes and sliding them under the door that had quite a gap between the bottom of it and the floor. Why the bathroom? Well, for whatever reason, it was literally the only interior door in the house I grew up in that locked. And being able to write notes behind a locked door was vital to this game, as far as we were concerned.
Because I was younger, I was usually the one in the corner of the kitchen, as close to the bathroom door as I could get. I crouched on the carpet and waited for a little piece of paper with brightly colored writing to be shoved from behind the butter-yellow door. There was really only one rule: no reaching under the door before the paper was visible.
We would carry on simple conversations on sheets of scratch paper that my mother kept in the bottom drawer of a kitchen cabinet. I remember nothing of what we wrote about, just that I would try to use as many different colors as possible. I would scrawl something out and then wait, nearly beside myself with anticipation, to see what she would write in response.
The thing that amazes me in retrospect is that we would do this for an hour or so at a time. It was a game that we had come up with on our own, and my mother encouraged it. Mostly, I think, because there was never any question of where we were and it was by far the quietest game we played. Not like the time we decided to see just how loud we could play a simplified Star Wars tune from my piano books while Dad was sleeping.
So, here’s to you Sarah. I can’t remember the last time we sent each other notes in crayon. Maybe we should start doing that again.
Improbable Phrases 
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