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.

CORRESPONDENCE

I was rummaging around, looking for some picture of my mother to post for Mother’s Day, when I came across a box of what I thought would be photos. Instead, the box turned out to be mostly filled up with old birthday cards and notes. I went ahead and started sorting things into keep/toss piles because I do not need a Hallmark birthday card from birthdays of past. As I sorted, I came across a stack of letters from my high school friend, David. I’m pretty sure we’d known each other since birth. We had always gone to school together starting in preschool and then we both went off to colleges on different sides of the state. I guess we the idea of not being at the same school at the same time was so unnatural to us that we wrote letters back and forth for almost a year. Then we diverged onto opposite pathways and just sort of stopped writing. I would say that David took the more traditional path. College, wife, business finance job, suburbs, kids. It is not a surprise to anyone that I took a less traditional path. I put David’s typed letters into the keep pile even though we haven’t talked in probably twenty years.

There was a letter from Stephanie. We didn’t write to each other often; never had the need to. We stay in somewhat regular contact, but I placed this into the keep stack. Her daughter, Cati, who is graduating from high school on Friday, will someday enjoy seeing her mother’s handwriting and getting a glimpse of her mom before she was a mom. Then I came across a series of postcards. All of them were from Chris, sent from different locations from the trip he made to Texas and New Mexico with Amy, Christy and Scott. Postcards from a trip centered around the hunt for UFOs. The first one I came across was a long postcard (not the traditional rectangle) of Western Texas. The first sentence Chris wrote says “I took this picture and made this postcard for you.” I read that and immediately snorted out a laugh. He had written snippets of their travels on the back of each postcard telling me how I would be wowed by the McDonald’s Observatory in Texas and about seeing deer and a skunk in their campsite in New Mexico. There was one that simply said “I miss you.” Under the stack of postcards, was a letter in an envelope addressed to me. I did not recognize the address of the sender, but when I opened the letter and read a sentence I knew instantly who it was from.

It was a letter from Chris, one he had sent me early in our relationship. He had been visiting someone in Texas. I can’t really remember the details of where he was when he wrote the letter, but I remember every detail of finding that letter in my dorm mailbox and reading it. I chuckle now, but when I first read this letter, I was shocked. It is positively pronographic. The thing that felt so shocking to me at the time about this letter was that this was the first time I had ever read anything pornographically directed to my person. I want you to keep in mind that I had never gone beyond kissing with anyone until Chris and when we met, Chris had already lived a life. He was five years older than me and had experience. Chris also had a wide open view of sex and sexuality. I came from an environment that lacked public displays of affection and where the topic of sex was never discussed unless it was in a negative way. I didn’t believe sex was bad. I just lacked the opportunity to have those experiences and I was naive. Chris was my guide and gave me a safe, non-judgmental environment to explore my own sexuality.

Not everyone gets so lucky.

I don’t think I can ever bring myself to read this letter again, but I tucked it back into the box with the postcards. One day, someone is going to be cleaning out my house after I die and they are going to come across a box filled with old letters. Maybe they won’t toss them immediately into the dumpster. Perplexed by these pieces of paper with handwriting on them, they’ll pause and read a few before tossing them aside. I am sure they will be confused by the woman these letters were written too, one set of letters of innocence often including scripture from a friend and another letter filled with graphic sex. I like the picture I am painting of myself here with my eclectic collection of things, a Vespa in the garage and roller skates in the closet. When they start clearing out after my death, I want them to find my collection of naked self portraits and the vibrator I keep behind a stuffed teddy bear on the shelf next to the bed and then shake their heads at the collection of religious/spiritual texts that they pull from the bookcase.

I want them to find all the colors to paint a portrait of a well rounded woman with a well lived life.

LOVE THURSDAY

Letters from Steph

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I came across a letter Dad had written to Mom way back when. In their very early years (like year one or something) of their marriage, Dad was in basic training for the Air Force. He was just about to be stationed in Michigan when my brother was born. Mom went home to her family to have Randy in the hospital in Mississippi. This letter was written two months after Randy was born. I was shocked when I found it. "Dad wrote you letters?!?!" I asked Mom. She sort of shrugged and waived it off with a "your Dad used to write me letters" like whatever. I didn't even know my Dad could write whole sentences, let alone a three page letter. I mean, I could see him sending a card signed "I love you", but not actual letters. He told Mom how much he loved her and how important Randy was to him. He talked about all the fun stuff they'd get to do in Michigan, all the camping and fishing. He was very excited about possibly visiting Canada. It was a letter of love and hopes and dreams for their future together. And it was sweet. 

It was a side of Dad I'd never seen. I love catching that glimpse of him at that age. I love the excitement I could hear in his words. I love most of all that he took the time to write it all down. Of course this was back in the day before email and texting. Long distance phone calls were expensive. Letters where how people communicated. I remember when texting became a thing and how I would never be into that. Now I'd rather send a text than talk on the phone. I'm supposed to call the home improvement company this week about how they said it would be 8-10 weeks and it's been 11 weeks and I'd like to have my bathroom done by Thanksgiving and I am dreading using my voice and talking on the phone to whine about this. I dread about 80% any verbal conversation. Sometimes I think I'd be better off walking around carrying a piece of chalk with a small chalkboard tied around my neck. Text is simple, to the point and concise (if in the proper hands). I don't have to worry that I'm calling someone at an inopportune time and bothering them. 

There is a downside of course. It's taken away the art of telling our daily stories. Let's be honest. If someone sends you a text asking "how are you doing?", you're probably not going to send them a lengthy reply about how things are really going. You're most likely to send back a simple "fine" or "good". You're not going to go on about how you and the family had colds last week, but all seem to be getting better now. The text will end there with the originator replying with something like "that's cool". And the day to day story of our lives become edited to "fine" and "OK". Writing an actual letter takes time particularly when using fingers more used to keyboards than pens. Yet, there is a sweet calmness in writing a letter. There's something about taking the time to form those letters and words. There is mindfulness in the composition. There is a little excitement in putting a stamp on the envelope and sending that letter off. I'm still naive enough to be thrilled by the romance of the postal service. Admit it. Those times you peak in the mailbox and find something other than junk or a bill, you get a little excited. There's joy and love and hope waiting inside the mailbox. 

Maybe the best way we could spend a Love Thursday today is to sit down and write a letter. And then send it. 

Happy Love Thursday.