I received my first hate email from this site two days ago. I guess it is to be expected; I have been doing this for about a year now without any. This particular email made me very angry, and I logged out of my email account without responding. I wanted more time to think it over first and to decide if I should respond. This particular person didn’t attack my writing, they attacked my character. When Alex woke up and began to get ready for work I told him about this woman and what she had said about me. Hey broke into a huge grin and said, “Your first hate mail! That’s great. You should create a page on your site just for hate mail and post it there.” His idea was intriguing; I have seen other journals with hate mail and responses that have been quite humorous. It wasn’t the course of action I really wanted to take though. Instead I waited until I had calmed down enough to respond, and I did so with kindness. I did not hear back from her. This got me to thinking about email. My former best friend used to tell me that email gave people false muscles, like alcohol. He was of course commenting on the fact that there were things that I would never have said to him in person that I confided via email. An even more dangerous combination is email or the phone with the addition of alcohol. Obviously I am not the only one who has used a computer screen to hide behind while communicating. I do try, however, to ask myself if I would feel comfortable saying whatever it is I am trying to convey via email directly to the person’s face.

My Mother recently sent me an email with the subject line “Your Cousin”. I currently have a cousin who is in the Army stationed in Afghanistan. One might think that he would have popped into my head first, but before I opened the email I already knew who the subject matter would be.

Back in 1983 my mom took her four children to her homeland of Australia. There I spent an idyllic summer surrounded by aunts and uncles, grandparents and countless cousins. It was the first time in my life that I felt free. My father stayed here in America; without him nearby I blossomed. I wasn’t so afraid. I didn’t feel the need to constantly walk on eggshells. I felt a sense of belonging, a feeling of being home for the first time, and more than anything I was surrounded by so much love that my heart threatened to burst.

During that time I met my cousin Steve. We hit it off immediately and spent hours together talking, walking around the abandoned railroad tracks of the sleepy little town my mom had grown up in, sneaking cigarettes and making plans for the future. We were both dreamers, you could say. We made plans to be famous musicians (him) and highly successful writers (me). We built each other up. Youth gave us the belief that anything was within our grasp. When I left that summer I ended up crying my eyes out at the airport, begging my mom not to take us back to America, back to a place where daily beatings at the hands of my father were the norm for us all, back to the place where we slept with one foot on the floor always ready to jump up and run at the first noise in the night.

The next trip to Australia took place under very different circumstances in 1985. My father had died. I had decided to take my inner rebel and run with her. I was shaving parts of my head, wearing tons of makeup and smoking a pack a day. I was nervous about seeing Steve again, afraid that the connection would be lost. We ended up discovering that although we had had zero contact since our last visit we were now wearing our hair the same, dressing in a similar way, and listening to the same bands. He had fulfilled his promise of learning to play the guitar, and was now quite good at it. We picked up where we had left off. When it was time for us to leave the country this time I tried to beg my mom to let us stay there. I felt that there was no life for me in America. My mom informed me that Steve and his mom and sister would be returning to America to live with us. I was so excited.

We spent the next several months spending all of our spare time together. He knew that at times I would gab on like a maniac and at other times I would sit in silence. Sometimes I would cry for seemingly no reason and he made it clear that was O.K. too. He tried to teach me to play guitar and we practiced together. We wrote music together, me working on the lyrics mostly, him carefully jotting down the notes. We agreed to meet in NYC when I turned 18. There we would start our own band, become famous, and live happily ever after, rich and free. Ah, to be young again.

When the time came for him to leave we considered running away. It seemed like the only solution until the reality of us having less than two dollars in coins and a half pack of smokes between us kicked in. We promised to keep in touch through letters. That promise lasted about 18 months, not bad considering our ages at the time.

My 18^th birthday came and went. I remembered the young woman who had been so naive to have thought that everything would be O.K. if only I could make it to NYC on this date. I had children; he had children. He married; I didn’t, until later. In 1993 I flew with Nathan to see my family once again. I saw Steve twice during that trip. I met his wife and kids. I had heard from family members that he had become successful as a guitarist; I wasn’t surprised. We didn’t have much time to talk during our visits, but he did ask me if I was still writing. I said no. He told me that I had a good head on my shoulders and a story to tell. “You should do it, kid” and he smiled. He asked me if I was still practicing the guitar chords he had taught me. I had to tell him that I had tried to, for a long time I tried, but without him there to guide me as to the finger placement I had given up. “It’s O.K. I can teach you again!” I laughed. It was too late. It was ridiculous. We parted, promising to write, although I think we both knew we wouldn’t.

Three years later a letter arrived in my mailbox from him. He was congratulating me on the birth of my daughter. We wrote back and forth for a while and then moved on to phone calls from time to time. Sometimes long stretches of time would go by without a word and then one of us would reach out. The time never seemed to matter; we picked up right where we had left off. During the period of time when his father was terminally ill and his marriage was headed for divorce we spoke frequently. When he met and fell in love with his second wife I didn’t hear from him often. I was admittedly the same with him. We were the opposite of fair weather friends in many ways. When I was in the darkest hour of depression it was him I called late one night, collect, no less. He accepted the charges and chatted with me until he had me laughing. He once calmed me down from a severe panic attack over the phone by going through his cupboards and fridge and naming everything he had that I, a vegetarian, could eat at his house. It worked for some strange reason.

More time passed with no contact. Last year his name popped up in my email inbox. I was surprised and pleased. We had never done the email thing. We started out with daily emails. In time they became weekly, and then monthly, then they stopped. I wasn’t sad or confused or surprised. I understood now that this was the way it had been since 1983 and that was O.K.

My mom’s email titled “Your Cousin” was about him, just as I had known it would be. While on vacation in Thailand he was riding a motorbike and was hit by a truck, which ran over his body and then fled the scene. He survived. He is now in the hospital in Thailand with too many broken bones to fly home. I ran through a whole series of emotions and ideas after I read the news. I went from wondering if I should call him at the hospital, wondering if I should send a card to him in Thailand or have one waiting for him when he returns home to Australia, to one crazy moment where I felt as if I should fly there and sit by his bedside to make sure he is O.K.

Right now I realize that no matter what I do, even if I decided to skip even the simplest gesture of a get well card, it would be alright. He would understand. Some relationships can transcend the restrictions of whatever means of communication are available to us at any given time. In a nutshell, I know it in my heart that I don’t have to say or do anything at all. He knows. He already knows what I would say.