LETTERS

Before we parted ways for different colleges, a friend and I agreed to stay in touch by writing each other letters. We had known each other since well before pre-school, our lives entwined through church and then school. A friendship born from just living in a small rural community. We joked that we had neighboring cribs in bed-babies class. This is how our Southern Baptist Church separated children out by age. It was a place to leave us while parents attended or led Sunday school classes. We were unavoidably tossed together and it was either be mortal enemies or just be friends. While I was chomping at the bit to escape for college, I was also a little nervous about leaving people behind and he was like a security blanket. So we agreed to write each other as often as possible.

The letters lasted for maybe two or three months, long enough for each of us to settle into new lives. I caught a recent episode of This American Life and the theme for the episode was about writing letters. It started with Ira interviewing some expert on letter writing and brain function. The expert letter writing person talked about the importance of hand written letters, how they convey emotion to the reader but also how the act of letter writing benefits the brain. This is what reminded me about those short few months my friend and I wrote to each other. Every letter I received from him was hand typed while I sent messy scrawling nonsense. Of course our letter writing didn’t last, nor did the friendship. I mean, we’re acquaintances. We both just sorted of faded off into separate worlds. I think he’s doing well, living the white man suburban dream with a wife and two kids, a job in finance. We haven’t seen or spoken in probably twenty years. Our worlds do not align.

That episode on letter writing sparked an urge to maybe write some letters, but then I couldn’t imagine what to tell people. The weather seems to always be a topic for letters. The weather here has been a week of pleasant followed with a week of being boiled and steamed alive. It just swings back and forth like that. In my visions, I picture myself writing in neat loopy letters, not my usual scratch. I think of telling someone in a letter about my tiny garden in the back that has grown wild and messy. There’s swallow tail caterpillars on the fennel and I’ve left them there unharmed in hopes of seeing them transform into butterflies. I think of writing to someone that I feel slightly hopeful for the future, seeing those letters neatly looping across a piece of paper, but the thing that keeps me from writing is the idea that I do not have enough words to fill a page.

Yesterday, I pulled the mail from the mailbox and sifted through the junk and the bills to find a postcard from Amani. It felt like she must have been reading my mind from two thousand miles away. I smiled back the picture of her smiling and flipped the card over to read the short message of love. Then it dawned on me that I did not have to fill pages with handwriting about sweltering temperatures and the next prediction of rain. A couple of sentences will suffice. So then I wasted an hour of time ordering a new set of postcards of some of my photos.

Maybe I’ll practice loopy cursive letters while I wait for the postcards to arrive.

THE GENETICS OF HANDWRITING

As I filled a garbage bag of leftover bits and pieces in the attic, I came across a bin of papers. From the top it looked like trash. Mice had eaten away at things and most of the papers were so old they crumbled when touched. But I stopped and took a moment to go through the box. I pulled out a crumbling photo album, Janell's very first baby picture and few other things. I realized then that it was time to take a break and go through this container with a little more care. I carried it downstairs so we could all go through it at the dinning room table. 

Mixed in with the garbage and the pictures, I pulled out a few letters. One of the letters was the very last letter that Memaw sent to Mom. It arrived after Memaw had passed away. My mother has never read the letter. She said it was just something she couldn't ever bring herself to do, so I took it. It was opened and had been read by someone at some time. The first thing I noticed about the letter was the handwriting. It's the same handwriting as Mom's. If I didn't know better, if all I had was the letter and not the envelope it came in with Effie McCool in the top left corner, I would think this was a letter from Mom. Except it's not. 

It's a letter from a woman I never knew telling a simple tale of daily life and the current happenings of Louisville MS in November of 1977. They'd all had colds, but were better now. A new Wal-Mart store and a new Piggly Wiggly had just opened. Memaw and Pepaw had spent a day cleaning up the Tucker family grave sites at Mars Hill Church. So and so had a new baby boy and some couple had separated. Memaw wanted to know if we were planning on visiting at Thanksgiving, but then wrote something about having already mostly finished this letter after talking on the phone with Mom about that very thing. At the end she tells my Mom "be good and hugs to all. We love you, Mother". I love that she's still telling my thirty something year old mom to "be good". 

I never knew Memaw. I was one (going on two) when this letter was written and she passed away. I've heard all of the stories from cousins and my brother and even Mom about how wonderful she was. They speak of her as if she were Mother Teresa. She was the grandma that you baked cookies with. She probably was the type that could have brushed my hair without me throwing a fit. I'm sure I would have sat for hours in her lap. Instead I got her wedding rings, her china and now her letter. I inherited her ability to make the perfect pie crust. And, if I take my time and don't rush the words, I notice that I have also inherited her handwriting.