My Dear and Great Friend

“My Dear and Great Friend”.  So began a touching three page, hand-written letter.  It was addressed to my step-father, building on a friendship begun in a time of war.

If you are younger than a certain age (say 30), it is entirely possible that you have never written a letter.  At the rate things are going with the USPS, I suggest you try it soon.  Letters are a much more personal and permanent communication than an email, tweet or text could ever be.  For one thing, each person’s handwriting is uniquely theirs and even that varies by mood and purpose.  You see a woman’s love letter and even the loops in the letters say romance.  Watch that same woman write an angry diatribe at a politician, a  friend who did her wrong or a partner and you’ll see where the pen pressed down deeply in the paper, where her writing slants up or down and where the letters get bigger for emphasis. And a signature, unspoiled by the speed we sign our name at a retail checkout is a part of one’s identity.  Think about where else you see the word, like the phrase “signature style” – doesn’t that mean a style that is yours alone?

A hand-written letter is more than a communication, it is a gift.  Well-written, poignant, funny, angry – whatever, they are read and re-read, shared and kept to read again another day.  I have a love letter from an old boyfriend from when I was in high school.  Its very sweet and romantic, right up  to the moment when he blows smoke from a joint on a sand crab and it dies.  Well, he was young.  There’s a letter form a boy in college, apologizing for standing me up.  Truth be told, I was mad.  But this letter contained every trite phrase ever composed.  He didn’t mean it to be a joke but it made me laugh and I never looked his way again.  But the letter I kept and brought out for a good laugh when needed. One special letter came from my husband’s grandmother when she heard we’d gotten engaged.  Her letter was more than congratulations.  She shared the highs and lows of her marriage, her philosophy on making a marriage work (with special attention to the “modern woman’s emphasis on work” which was actually quite astute.  I still have the letter from the first politician (local) who wrote me to invite me to be an official member of his campaign.  There are letters from my grandfather – what a treasure!  Letters from my father who was stationed abroad and so missed my high school graduation.  Actually, as a child, I would write letters to my father wherever he was stationed and he, a frustrated would-be English teacher, would send them back corrected in red ink.  He corrected spelling and chided me not to use worn-out greetings like “How are you?  I am fine” as we were taught to do in school.  Yes.  In school.  Children used to learn how to write a proper social letter and business letter as part of their English lessons.

Letters offer more than memories; they are a way to track history.  Did you know that Churchill and Roosevelt kept up secret correspondence throughout World War II?  They have proven to be a valuable source to learn what these world leaders  were thinking.  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were also great correspondents whose letters offer great historical insight. (Trivia: both died on July 4, 1826 within hours of each other.).  Letter writers don’t have to be famous to give us a look at history.  In my family, we have my stepfather’s correspondence during and after World War II.  Letters from home show the impact on the homefront. But the letters from friends he made overseas offer a different look into postwar rebuilding and shortages and how much the U.S. was admired and trusted.

With technology changing at a faster and faster pace, its an easy argument to make that, no matter how beautifully you write words and compose letters, emails, tweets, texts and whatever comes next to make these formats dinosaurs, its hard to imagine keeping them around in the same way.  Even if you keep print copies or digital copies, they won’t be as expressive as an actual letter.

If you’re even remotely interested, I have a challenge for you.  Get a piece of paper or two.  Its very hard to actually buy stationery anymore.  Write a hand-written letter to someone who is important to you.  It doesn’t have to be long but make it heartfelt.  Actually, send two. Send one to someone older than you who will be touched by your gesture and likely to write back.  You need the experience of receiving a letter as much as sending one.  and make the second one to whoever you choose, regardless of age.  If they’re younger than you, you’ll be giving them a gift they may never get again.  I swear to you I have no stock in the U.S. Postal Service.  This exercise will only cost you $.88 for two stamps.  But the letters will be, as they say, priceless.

Keep Moving

Which is more dangerous, driving or parking?

The average person would certainly say driving is the riskier option, but they don’t have my car – or my luck.

I have never been in a car accident when my car was moving.  (Excuse me while I go knock on wood.)  But things change when my car isn’t moving.  For example:

• There was the time in 1978.  My car was a retired Vermont State Police cruiser.  Its engine was so powerful that rednecks used to try to race me when they were next to me at traffic lights.  Gas mileage was deplorable, but the per gallon cost of gas was less than $1.00.  This big powerful car was parked at the curb in front of my apartment and I was inside hosting a party with my roommates.  That is, until my roommate’s boyfriend took the curve on the street a little too tight and hit my car.  No….totaled my car.
• How about when I was parked in the grocery store lot?  I walked back to my car to see that the car behind me was actually touching mine. I was mad but had groceries and small children and just got in the car to leave.  As I left, I looked back to see that same car following me.  The driver had neglected to put it in park.
• When my children were in elementary school, I was in a carpool.  My duty was afternoon pickup of 4 children.  So I was parked on the street in front of the school waiting for my charges.  Suddenly, there was a huge push and loud scrape – a school bus had hit me!  When I got out of the car to see, my side mirror was on the street.  I chased the bus into the school lot and approached the driver  – who denied it!  I had taken down the bus number and had my mirror in my hand so finally her supervisor agreed and gave me their insurance information.
• Okay, the holiday version:  I had driven to one of the large box stores, one with a bright red logo.  I came down one crowded lane and spotted more spaces on the lane over.  So I pulled up to the end of the lane to wait for a chance to turn right .  What could go wrong there?  Did you guess?  The cart-pusher who had just collected a long stream of carts to push back to the store mis-judged the distance and pushed them between me and the cars in the lot.  He scraped my car with every blessed one of those carts.  I rolled down the window to yell first, then jumped out to scream, “You’re scraping my car” and he just looked at me blankly.   I had to run in to find a manager, then move my car and take pictures and fill out the documentation required by their insurance company.
• I’m leaving out the miscellaneous scrapes and scratches we all acquire in parking lots.  I’ve also had  some not so small dents that no one considered important enough to leave a note.  I’d like to point out here that this has been over a lifetime of cars, so its just not one that is hard to see or something.

I realize this may be a stupid subject for a blog post but its on my mind today.  Why?

Does anyone else have this kind of luck?

Life in Black and White

I’ve never been a talented photographer but I love photographs.  I remember our family’s old Brownie camera  and how it felt to look down into the camera and snap that shot of the family dog.  The only time I tried to develop some skills was when I was working towards a Girl Scout badge in photography. I earned the badge but never did learn where the sun was supposed to be relative to your subject and I’m sure it  showed.

I especially love black and white photographs,particularly old ones.   They draw me in and make me want to look closer than ones in color.  My other blog, “Al’s War: One Man’s Journey Through WW 2”, features exclusively black and white photos due to the time period.  Most of them seem bleak, but I think its quite fitting of the time and what they were going through.

But I’ve used primarily old family photos for this blog, too.  My grandmother had a room lined with old photo albums.  She had inherited them and didn’t necessarily know who was in each picture.  Even as a child I loved to look at them.  My mother said recently that her mother didn’t keep photographs or care about that, which surprises me because that’s not what I remember.  Now most of those photos belong to me, and while I don’t know them all, I’m fascinated by these people, my family, in the varied situations.  I mean, look at my grandmother (not the same one) crossing this rope bridge in a dress and pearls:  

I don’t think you could get me to cross that bridge unless I had a harness or  was on my hands and knees.  And I sure wouldn’t be wearing a nice dress.  But times change and we women have, too.  I wonder what she would think of her great-granddaughter on another bridge?

And what about this next shot below?  No, I don’t know exactly who they are but I know they are my relatives and that I had summer picnics and swam at this same location, long after they did, on a river bank near my aunt and uncle’s house in Virginia .

in Virginia

You know why they’re just sitting there?  I guarantee they’ve had the picnic lunch and been told that they have to stay out of the water for an hour to digest.  Why that was I don’t know but I heard it for years.  Lastly for now, one more picture that I always enjoy.  Happy Easter!

Sesame Street and other Things That Stick with Me

Now, I think I’ve established that I am too old to have watched Sesame Street as a child.  No, I am more of the time period that offered the original Captain Kangaroo and Romper Room.  Romper Room, if you are too young to remember, made you feel like you were in a preschool classroom.  The teacher was always Miss —– (By the way, I am related by marriage to a woman who was once Miss Vonnie on her local Romper Room – best celebrity thrill for me!).  The teacher had a Magic Mirror through which she could see and name all the children whose parents had sent in their names.  And there was snack time.  I loved if my mother would make a snack for me so I could be part of it.

My children, though, were more of the Sesame Street generation.  Since there is a 10 year gap between oldest and youngest, I spent a lot of time with it on.  And we had videos and musical tapes.  As each child moved on, another found the show. Even after all were grown, Sesame Street is on the soundtrack of my life.  I discovered how deeply it was embedded when my husband walked in and discovered me singing, “Teeny Little Super Guy”.  I saw his confused reaction and said, “Don’t you remember this from Saturday Night Live?”.   When he said he didn’t, I went to YouTube and plugged in “Teeny Little Super Guy” to refresh his memory.  You guessed it: it popped up with credits to Sesame Street.  None of my kids remember it.  Do you?

Other things I remember from Big Bird, Cookie Monster and Grover:
1) How to count from 1 to 10  and to say “cookie”  in Spanish
2) Great songs, like “C is for Cookie” and my favorite, “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ” (pronounced as one word)
3) The elephant who asked for directions but never waited to hear them all. When I’d say to my child, “You’re being just like the elephant on Sesame Street”, they’d never understand the lesson.
4) How to read “The Monster at the End of this Book” in full Grover voice.

Don’t worry.  There are alot of things my children DO remember from their childhood. Sometimes, they are surprised that their friends don’t have the same memories.  They’ll call home and say, “You’re not going to believe…”.  But that’s another post.

What has stuck with you over the years?

From Archive.SesameWorkshop.org