Since Ireland, I've been on some kind of personal journey back in time. I've been thinking about and trying to recover old music from iTunes. I've cleaned out and reorganized my desk and bookshelves and searched through hundreds of photos from childhood and on through the years. Ordinarily, I don't make time for looking back. I have no idea what's gotten into me, but I've decided to go with it because the net result has been reclaiming usable house space and, unexpectedly, lots of reminiscence both good and bittersweet.
The best rediscovery by far has been a box of letters and keepsakes that I had not opened in 20 years. My own private time capsule. I'd saved report cards and papers from elementary school through college. Greeting cards, of course! Mementos from my high school days as a House Page in the U.S. House of Representatives. A Congressional Record signed by Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill. An autograph from Dudley Moore that he surrendered in FAO Schwartz where a crazy friend from Arkansas, my Irish twin and I accosted him one day.
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| Mom |
But better than all these goodies were the letters. Hundreds of them. Despite the fact that I spent five hours straight going through them all one day, I've only read a smattering so far. My sister, herself, now a US Ambassador unwittingly created a snap-shot of history by chronicling her first tour of duty in Johannesburg, South Africa during apartheid in monthly letters to me. My Irish twin sister regaled me while I was away in Washington with hilarious anecdotes from home, highlighting the activities of my parents', our friends, herself and even the dog. Rereading the letters from my mother now, who we lost before I got married or became a parent, opens up a new understanding of the fervency of her love for me and the worries I caused her. In one note, she thanks me for not just loving her, but telling her so. Nineteen years gone and she's still making me feel good about myself.
Family you expect to be constant, but I am particularly lucky in that some of my very best friends in the world then remain as near and dear today. I think I will invite each one over individually to share these old treasures and see if we can recall the circumstances, the characters referred to, the love interests and the shared jokes even now with our minds addled by age. Other correspondents I've lost touch with, but may look up on facebook to see what they're doing. In an interesting twist, the least riveting letters now were the ones I'd have looked forward to the most back in the day--the all-important love letters!
One thing that struck me about so many of the letters was how well-written and genuinely entertaining they were. Writing letters and striving to make them interesting or funny was something we all did. A cliche like, "don't forget to write," wasn't just a joke. That IS how we kept in touch--male and female. Unfortunately, it is an art form that we have all but lost with the advent of email and cell phones. Few 20-somethings today will have a treasure trove like mine to open during their mid-life reckonings. In a way, it seems like life is a far more superficial enterprise altogether now. In writing letters, we shared a part of ourselves. We opened up and committed to paper our thoughts, observations and our feeling in a way that isn't imaginable today. In being apart from someone then, we might actually have become closer than ever through letters. Now, we just lose touch.
If you've got one of these boxes lurking around your attic, I encourage you to take a chilly winter's day and devote it to reacquainting yourself with your youth. You may find references to things you'd quite forgotten about yourself (I must have sent homemade cookies to people on a weekly basis, though I don't remember ever doing so!). If you're young now and the only correspondence you get comes via email, I suggest you print them out and put them into a box for safekeeping. Years from now and 10 PCs later, you won't have anything to look back on if you don't.
5 comments:
Lovely column Mariah... Holding a letter or card in your hand, having that physical touch, seeing the handwriting of your affections...that is a wonderful thing and I fear a lost art. I cherish those letters too. Thx
A shame that it's gone by the wayside, but nice to be part of the generations who still could appreciate it--even if we were the last one!
Thank you, Mariah, for being the treasure chest of our youth. Along with letter writing, meaningful phone conversations have diminsihed as well. I look forward to spending time with you reliving and perhaps rewriting our younger years. I am wondering if you stumbled upon this collection or if you knew exactly where it was when you retrieved it?
Lovely..
I had a similar thought the other day when I found a package of writing paper with Snoopy and Woodstock in a pile of crafts and remembered that I used similar paper to write letters to my friends who were away at college. We'd sneak in class and write letters instead of classwork much the same way my students try to text under their desks in today's classroom.
Anon, knew it was up there, but had to disturb a lot of dust to find it.
Suzanne, lots of these letters were written in class on notebook paper.
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