Therapy Bits

With thanks to Fandango for today’s prompt!

FOWC With Fandango — Correspondence – Facts, Fictions & Fantasies

In a quiet town nestled among the hills of Vermont, a girl named Clara spent her afternoons in the small public library where her mother worked. Clara loved books, but what she loved even more were stories written just for her — and so she became a devoted penpal.

Across the Atlantic, in a coastal village in County Clare, Ireland, lived Aidan, a boy who could hear the sea from his bedroom window. He had a restless mind and a teacher who noticed. One day, she handed him a letter from an American school. “A penpal program,” she said. “Try writing back.”

So he did.

The first letter was cautious. Simple introductions, favorite colors, pets. Clara wrote in purple ink and signed her name with a tiny drawing of a fox. Aidan, in contrast, wrote in tidy block letters and enclosed a pressed shamrock in the fold. Over time, the letters grew longer. They wrote about everything: Aidan’s adventures fixing old fishing boats with his uncle, Clara’s science fair disaster involving vinegar and a plastic volcano. They traded thoughts on school, dreams, the loneliness of feeling different.

Years passed. What started as an assignment became something more — a friendship stitched across oceans, bound by the steady rhythm of correspondence. They grew together without ever meeting, their words shaping who they were.

Sometimes, weeks would go by with no letter. Life, as it does, would interrupt. But then, without fail, one would sit down, pick up a pen, and write: Dear Clara or Dear Aidan, and the distance between them would shrink once again.

One day, Clara’s letter ended with a question: What would you say if I came to visit this summer?

Aidan stared at the sentence, read it again, and smiled. He pulled out fresh paper and wrote with the sea whispering just beyond his window.

"I’d say the kettle’s already on."

And so, after years of ink and imagination, the two friends finally met — not as strangers, but as old companions whose bond had always lived in the lines between words.