Dear Son,

My parents went to Mallorca for two weeks, or was it three weeks? It is a bit difficult to keep up wit their European style vacations. Both of my parents get 6 weeks of free time each year. My mother even gets a little more. She works so incredibly much.
My parents sent me two postcards from Mallorca. My mother has the handwriting of an elementary school teacher, she used to be one, first to 8th grade... well ,that is beyond elementary, of course. My father writes like a little printshop. He used to design things, now he builds things, he always had this iso italic handwriting....
The first postcard was written my my mother only...

Dear Son,
We visited the house of Frederic Chopin, here in Mallorca. It is all incredibly impressive. Most impressive about this place are the letters he wrote to his parents. His handwriting reminds me of yours. It felt almost as if I were looking at letters from you to us.

Hmm, I wonder if my mother was trying to tell me something yet again...
My father only started to write the second postcard... he then gave up and gave it to my mother, so she could apply her finishing psychological touches...

"Dear Parents", this is how Frederic Chopin would begin his letters to his parents. There were many, many letters here that started with these words "Dear Parents"...

I recently got immunisation against such tag team reminder attacks... Spending some days with my parents was a really good reminder how much we all need each other and how much we need each other... I looked at both postcards... I turned them around. I looked at the blurry photographs of Mallorca, looked at this black and white photograph of Frederic Chopin, which explained in a split second why we know him mostly in profile...
I looked Frederic into his postcard eye and somehow he seemed to smile. I smiled back at him and imagined how interesting it would have been if all the letters had been in his final residence in Mallorca, simply because he never sent them. What if they had been a silent, brewing, self-therapeutic attempt to heal the wounds that even his compositions could not heal... I imagined what the letters might have said...

Dear Parents,
the weather here is really horrible. I do not think you should come visit me this next month. Yes mother, I know that the diet here is not quite as good as your incredible recipes. Yes, my piano play is improving, dad, though I will probably never be as good as your old friend Jasio... please send my regards to my good old piano room, I hear you converted it into storage...

Something like that, I guess... I will just start all of my phone conversations with my parents with a "Dear Mother and dear father," there will be Chopin in the background, well, maybe this.