Finally, I bit the bullet this morning and started to clean out the closets where my deceased mother had stored her stuff. I pulled out box after box. Hampers, trays, bowls full of old costume jewelry. I looked at it all in a kind of a daze, threw a lot of stuff away, and then....a box with her name and address on it, postmarked many years ago - a box from my aunt Polly - also long, long dead. I opened it up, what could be inside?
Old letters, that's what. Almost all of them written by people who are no longer breathing on this planet. Here's one, written by my mother to her sister on September 24, 1956:
Monday afternoon
1:00 pm - Sept. 24th
Dear Hearts,
It's a girl - big, assertive and strong-lunged, born at 8:15 last night. To the
surprise of us all, she weighs 9lbs & 5 oz.!
It was a very, very pokey labor, but not difficult, and I'm feeling ever so chipper and well, after watching the baby being born.
Wendy, truth to tell, is not nearly so handsome a baby as was Kurt. She is very red, double-chinned, and has a most snubby nose. But to us, she is gorgeous.
So much for now, I just wanted you to know right away. All our love, Win, G, Kurt, Wendy
A most snubby nose? Gee, Mom - thanks a lot! But how did you really feel the day after I was born? Apparently, pretty happy. Honestly, finding and reading that letter made me cry - something I had been afraid would happen when I started cleaning out the closets.
The box also contained all sorts of other treasures, including a children's book/rhyme by Mom entitled "The Cat Who Wore Glasses" (it's a pretty cute little story, I will post it here some other time).
Also found: My grandfather's Lutheran ordination certificate (in German); my high school diploma; some old love letters to my mom from a fellow I always thought had been just a family friend (oops!); and several short stories from one of the aunts.
The return address on these stories (carbon copies of typed manuscripts! Wow! Onion paper! Does anyone else here remember that stuff?) was in Florida, at an "organic citrus farm" - an organic citrus farm 50 years ago - my goodness, I thought the organic thing was a recent craze, but apparently my aunt Polly was into it a long while back. She was also into Orgone Accumulators (google it), but she was the family eccentric - sometimes people tell me I remind them of her.
These old letters are full of news and full of the spirits of the people who wrote them. Postmarked back before zip codes were invented - when there was just a single digit postal code within each city (we lived in St. Paul, 4, Minnesota). Some letters mailed with 4 cent stamps. All handwritten, all heartfelt. People used to write to each other back when long distance phone calls were expensive. They didn't have a conversation and hang up. They wrote their thoughts down, and some of us can still read them. Back then, air travel was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill you could tell all your friends about. Yesterday, I dropped my best friend off at the airport - she tooka plane to Houston and I called her on her cell phone to make sure she got there OK. Nothing written to commemorate the event, except maybe a quick e-mail later on today.
I wonder how much of our thoughts and expressions will survive our deaths in this e-mail age? I know people used to throw out letters, but they used to save them, too. What if Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had corresponded by e-mail? Would more have been saved, or less? I don' t know.
My last remaining uncle is coming down here next week to visit with my last remaining aunt. I am sending her a package of this stuff so that they can have something interesting to talk about when he gets here. What an interesting surprise this morning brought me. I shall share it with them and see what they have to say.
Be thoughtful, be warm, be cool
Byrd in LA
Posted by wahzoh at August 8, 2007 12:39 PMA letter written about your birth the day after you were born! What a treasure! Something to cherish always.
Posted by: Michele at August 8, 2007 01:44 PMYeah, my Dad died a couple years ago, and I found dozens of letters. We lived in Montreal for a while when I was a kid, and my mother wrote her mother (in California) every week. My dad saved 'em all. Also I found letters written by relatives in the 19th century!
Letter writing truly is a lost art. Maybe email will bring it back.
Posted by: Vanya at August 8, 2007 02:07 PMByrd,
Letter writing is how I began as a writer myself... In fact, it's how I earn a living.
Please read the comment on the Tzu Tsays blog here on FWP. It's ALL ABOUT YOU.
Yours Truly,
Newly Awakened Me
Byrd:
Nice post. I figured out how important letters were in 1970 when I went through Army basic training. When the guys in my company learned that I was a sports writer for a newspaper, I got all these guys wanting me to write their girls back home. They could hardly put a poetic sentence together, so I chanrged them one dollar for a one page letter.
They would tell me how they felt and I would put the words together for them. They would recopy them in their own handwriting and put them in the mail. We were mandated to write home by our drill instructors, so I made enough money for smokes, newspapers, and other goodies at the PX.
I have a whole box of letters and journals written by my deceased mom and aunts that I can't find the courage to read. maybe some day.
Charles
Charles
Posted by: Charles at August 9, 2007 05:18 PM