Almost 35 years ago when our oldest son decided to attend University of Toronto to study music performance, parting with him was a blow I was unable to surmount with ease, despite the fact that both his father and I wanted him to get on with his life and to achieve the goals he had set for himself. His absence from our daily life was a tribulation and a trial. I began what would amount to a never-ending stream of letters, telling him in detail what had occurred at home in his absence, to ensure he would himself not feel estranged emotionally.

When our younger son followed his older brother to study science at University of Toronto, my sense of bereavement only increased. And so did the letter-writing. True, we travelled often to Toronto to check on their well-being and to reassure ourselves and them as well that all was going according to the normal life-path of young people setting out to become educated and to forge their way in the world.

Our daughter, after her initial year at University of Ottawa, took up her own technical profession through her studies at Algonquin College, but she remained at home until the time she made a home of her own but remaining within the close travel orbit of the city. I saw no need to write letters to her, our contact was frequent. When our granddaughter was born we looked after her daily through the working week while her mother was employed. And when they eventually moved when our granddaughter was nine, 100 km distant from us and we were dependent on seeing them on weekly visits I tentatively began writing to our grandchild, but that didn't last very long.

I'm still writing to our boys. My correspondence to them has dropped from its twice-weekly schedule to one letter per week. In the mid-earlier years when my husband and I lived abroad, three letters went out bi-weekly to all three children before the advent of personal computers with the use of a very small portable typewriter reliant on heat-transfer technology to print on special paper.

It is as though by continuing the correspondence-contact by mail that tenuous connection remains intact. Needless to say there are regular visits to spend time with us throughout the space of each year. Even though of course, there are telephone conversations and email connections; our sons have emailed us from all corners of the world in their many travels; contact often seems ephemeral.. Using regular mail I'm able to send along the occasional photograph, and more often newspaper clippings that may be of interest to them although of course the same can be done with email attachments.

Old habits refuse to fade away. It is, of course, more than merely habit. I still on occasion dream about them all, as children, still living at home; the intimate past comes knocking at the door of dreamland reminding me that it lives on, deep in my subconscious.