Reading old letters
My ex-husband saves things. A lot of things. But mostly paper.
Old magazines, old newspapers, old medical records, every piece of artwork our son ever created, and old letters.
Recently he’s been going through the stacks and trying to weed a lot of it out. Good luck. But one of the results of that activity is that he periodically shows me some old letters he thinks might interest me. Some of these are around fifty years old, and none of them were written later than thirty years ago.
It turns out I remember none of them – nor does he, by the way. Some of them I may not even have ever seen in the first place, since many were written to him by members of his family, my in-laws. I’ve found reading them to be an emotional and sometimes revelatory experience.
There’s the humor, wit, and warmth of some people who’ve died, and the act of missing them anew. That’s bittersweet.
Some of the letters to my ex from one particular sibling of his, and his mother, somewhat stunned me. I saw two things in those letters that I would have liked to have known at the time. The first is that one relative, who hasn’t always been the friendliest in real life, always closed his notes by saying to say hi to me. So much friendlier and more thoughtful towards me than I ever knew! The same for my mother-in-law, who mentioned me in every letter with great warmth and praise although in person we had our differences and problems. The whole thing just about brought me to tears, not tears of upset but of a complex of feelings that came down to: if only I’d known. She’s been gone almost twenty years.
A few from my mother, who was a good writer. And although I don’t remember these particular ones I certainly remember her letters, a few of which I’ve saved in my own archives over the years.
And one from a friend I thought had never written me a single thing. Perhaps that’s all she ever did write me – just the one – but it shocked and pleased me nevertheless to see it.
I often tease my ex about his propensity for saving so much. At least now that we don’t live together, I don’t have to open closets and see the stacks, or encounter them in random places out in the open (I have my own stacks, of course, but most are in a file cabinet and the rest are relatively small). But I can hardly criticize him at this point for saving these letters. They seem very precious all these years later.
My aunt saves a lot of things. She saved all the letters my mother and she wrote back and forth to each other. (She copied hers before sending them to my mom.) My mom died ten years ago, so reading those letters was great. It’s funny how we remember stuff compared to what it turned out to be.
My mom had saved all the letters she and my dad wrote to each other when they were engaged and when they first got married. I do not know what happened to them. I think they are in my sister’s basement somewhere. There are a lot of things in boxes there. I read those letters when we were moving my parent out of the house they were living in at the time. I really loved reading them. You never really think of parents (especially parents in their late sixties, which they were at the time) as young and in love.
The loss of the hand written note/letter/journal is a very sad thing. Future generations are going to have almost no physical momentos of loved ones only digital. I have been designated to take all of my parents things after my mom died a year and a half ago and it is an inconvenience on some level but I am glad I did.
In some ways we are regressing to pre approx. 1840.
I come from a family of hoarders. I think my father was the main source, and it seems it was something about his upbringing, but not taught by his mother or father. My mom and sister essentially became conditioned to it. My college experience broke me of it. Every now and then, a fond memory will come of the stuff, but overall, I think opportunities for better experiences were lost.
We did one day came across a shoe box of letters kept by my paternal grandmother. She passed a few years before my father, and I guess he kept it from her possessions in her home. One letter was a “if we only knew at the time”. In short, it explained that my father had purchased my grandmother’s home for her. We never knew. And it probably is best we didn’t know any earlier.
My father’s parents divorced when he was young and their only child. There was a bitter custody battle during an era when women didn’t have jobs that could really support them, and my grandfather used that against my grandmother, but she managed to prevail. My father’s early years was living in a single parent poor household (likely driving his hoarding later in life), but he managed to work hard and get a college scholarship, a military contract, and an engineering degree. He was living with an upper middle class income by the time he retired. It only makes sense that he would repay his mom’s love and caring by caring for her and providing her a home as she did for him.
Unfortunately, in the years just prior to retirement, my parents separated. There were many problems, but one issue is a realization by my mom that my father’s income didn’t match his take home. The speculation was it was going to a mistress. In the meantime, my mother’s parents stepped in to help her financially (not really necessary but they had extra means). My mom could never prove anything and my dad wasn’t telling. Had it come out that he was financially supporting his mother, while my mother’s parents were supposed the rest of his family, then that my have sealed the deal on a divorce.
Eventually my parents reconciled issues to rebuild their marriage. They were back together by his retirement and through the years of losing their parents. It wasn’t a fairytale relationship, but they were together when my father passed.
Not trying to one-up-you, Neo. Just writing to show that I understand.
After my mother died, my brother and I were cleaning out her papers and came across one of those letters you write, and then decide not to send. It was written to our father during or after the divorce. My brother read it out loud, and we loved it. It right on the nose.
My wife and I were hardly together before events turned us into a “long distance relationship that lasted several years.*” I was an impoverished student at the time and wrote her a lot of letters, since I couldn’t afford long distance phone calls (remember long distance phone calls?!).
I know she has saved all those letters. I cringe at the thought of someone discovering them one day! I have not read any of them in the decades since; not sure if she has. Oh well, if her and I die in a fiery car crash and our children are forced to go through our possessions they’ll learn that their father really liked their mother, a lot. And that he was once a sentimental, lovestruck young fool. I don’t think the part about being a fool will surprise my children 🙂 !
*Ultimately rectified through marriage.
Regarding your mother-in-law, I have observed that being a mother-in-law and being a daughter-in-law are very difficult things. I’m glad you received some new insight into her thoughts about you!
As you know, some people are better at sharing emotions in letters than in person. Perhaps she was that type of person.
As the family repository for such things…there are actual “pounds” of letters and notes. A big leather box holds hundreds of WWI-era love notes bundled in blue ribbon…my great aunt received them from her soldier fiancé. It seems unkind to untie the ribbons and disturb them. The few I’ve looked at are flowery in the extreme.
Then there’s the hundred Civil War letters my Pennsylvania farm folk ancestors wrote to their 5 soldier sons. Only 4 came home. So much love…and so much pain at the loss. The amazing thing: that stash of letters rode around in a Union soldier’s haversack for four years, in all weather and battle conditions…and survives to this day.
My parents’ correspondence stretches from courting days at UNC (both of them on the GI Bill) ‘til his death in the early ‘70’s. They were physically separated for long stretches due to his work so: a giant shoebox of letters. The big reveal: they agreed their children were both “odd ducks.” Well, the apples didn’t fall far from the trees…just saying!
Then, my own stash: almost every morning of our 39-year marriage, my husband has written me a little love note. On scraps of paper. I give ‘em a quick kiss and put ‘em on the stack. Every couple of years I add the stack to the bundle….
When my father was getting older, one of his exercises was to type a page of his memoirs on a manual typewriter. To keep his hands limber. Then he THREW THEM AWAY!!! Why couldn’t we have had even a little bit of a hoarder…?
We later found a bound set of his letters home from the war. He was an Infantry platoon leader and occasional company commander until they could find another captain.
He had his mom and mine convinced he was driving the chaplains around division rear.
This lasted until his Silver Star and third Purple Heart hit the local paper. The tone of the letters changed and I couldn’t get into them.
Ruth,
Incredible! What a legacy, and responsibility. Seems like you’re up to the task!
If I knew you were divorced, I forgot it. Were you and your ex always amicable? My mother was divorced twice. Her first husband cheated on her, and her second (my dad), wasn’t a great husband and a worse dad. However, she has remained good friends with both of them ever since. They even compete with each other to see who is the first to call my mother for her birthday every year! They both have also said they regret letting her go. My mom, on the other hand, is content to be alone.
I always joke with my mother that she gave me totally false expectations of what divorced life would be like. My ex was much like my dad in marriage, and when we split, I expected the similarities to carry over – I thought he would spend his days pining for me (like my dad for my mom), but that maybe we could remain amicable and peacefully coparent. Instead, he hates my guts, I hate his guts, and his new wife and I hate each other even more.
Anyway, no need to get into the nitty gritty right now. But when I hear of divorced couples being friendly with each other, I am always inclined to ask if it was always that way or if it was something that had to develop over time, long after the marital pains subsided.
NS:
My ex and I were always very close. But the divorce was very traumatic and there was a lot of stress and bitterness for maybe five years or so. Then we became close again. We also both love our child and grandchildren very very much and have always been on the same page about that, which helps. Our child was college age at the time of the split, which also helped.
Ruth:
What a treasure trove!
Neo, what a trip down memory lane!
and Ruth – that sounds just priceless.
I remember when I was a kid and being the nerd that loved collecting stamps this elderly couple that my father worked for gave me all their old postcards from a pre-WWII trip to Europe so that I could have the stamps. While the stamps were great what was more fascinating to me was what they wrote on the postcards explaining the situation in Europe at the time! Unfortunately, once my father found out that I was reading them instead of soaking the stamps off – he demanded that I “stop invading their privacy” and soak the stamps off right away and throw out the postcards! I guess that I am a hoarder as I still have the stamps.
My brother was recently cleaning out our parent’s house and found an old metal box filled with all my letters that I had written home from when I was in college, and especially all the letters/postcards I sent from when I lived in East Asia. Boy, what a trip it was for me to start reading those.
It also makes me think of what is lost when the current generation is sending everything by email/text – what will their children find? The same is true with old photos – a lot is being lost to future generations by everything being digital and therefore, easy to delete.
Here’s a moving story about the discovery of a set of preserved letters, sent from a father to a son who had emigrated from Ireland to America during the famine, which inspired the song Letters from Kilkelly. Wish I could hug my sweet Irish dad, who passed in 2020:
https://www.irishcentral.com/homepage/the-moving-letters-of-a-family-to-their-son-in-america-after-the-famine
Hear the song here:
https://youtu.be/ovlB4O1jY54
}}} I’ve found reading them to be an emotional and sometimes revelatory experience.
There’s the humor, wit, and warmth of some people who’ve died, and the act of missing them anew. That’s bittersweet.
Yeah, on a far less personal level, I found reading older copies of American Heritage, a history magazine, of interest, and there is an echo of that in what you’re discussing, I think —
Looking at things like that is a time capsule of how you (and others) thought about certain things in a context which may have radically changed… A comment from one person who you did not know (then) would die soon, for example, adds an interesting aspect to whatever was discussed. Or a parent talking about a child, and knowing years later how the child’s life went, and possibly seeing how the comment revealed something of how that life would go in some regard, but which you never would have seen at the time…
This is the appeal of “Time Capsules” as a concept, but it does a much better job of exposing it than anything in a single capsule has. You begin to view the meta — the element of historical studies about history itself — as something you personally can comprehend, and how — and why — “history” varies somewhat with time (Note that I’m not talking about politically motivated re-writing of history — I’m talking about changes in historical perspective tied to developing information on the longer term affect of some event — commentary about the Cold War in 1983, when no one would have imagined the collapse of the USSR was only 6-7 years away).
American Heritage is “history at this moment” that generally isn’t all that dry, as reading a 70yo history book likely would be…
American Heritage back issues are available/accessible online:
https://www.americanheritage.com/magazine/archive
As an example, reading articles about the moon landings when they were still happening. Or about the Cold War, in from the variable perspective of the 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s. Or post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s. Or about The Gulf War in a 1993 article. Or the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan… etc., when they were still “in effect”.
It’s not just a matter of the information they contain, it’s also all about the outlook of the times they occurred in, or the “retrospective” view of something in the recent past vs. the “ancient history” (e.g., a “done deal” with most of the relevance/repercussions wrung out of it) which it has now essentially become.
Commentaries about presidential scandals ca. 1974, compared with something related written about Clinton, or Obama, or Trump.
P.S., there is also a related magazine about the history of invention and techology.
https://www.inventionandtech.com/magazine/archive
By Steam to the Moon:
https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/steam-moon-1
The “Invention” of Caisson Disease (aka “The Bends”):
https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/under-pressure-1
The Race to Invent Video:
https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/race-invent-video
Related: “The Color War”:
https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/color-war-1
Also related: “The Color War Goes To The Moon”:
https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/color-war-goes-moon-1
Now — most of these are, unlike American Heritage, all that “interesting” in perspective.
But I found this one quite interesting:
https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/pumps-new-orleans-1
Fall 1992
Money-quote:
The linchpin of the entire system—pumps, spillways, the works—is the levee. Most levees are made of earth and carefully calculated to withstand the force of the river. Engineers must take into account everything from the stability of different soil types to the centrifugal force of water at river bends to build a safe levee. Taken with the control structures upstream, the levee system around New Orleans could protect the city from virtually any river flood possible. The levees are also built to take a direct hit from a Category 3 hurricane, the other major natural disaster that the city might have to face. A Category 3 generates twelve-foot tides and 130-miles-perhour winds. In 1969 Hurricane Camille, with twenty-six-foot tides and 190-mph winds, missed New Orleans by sixty miles. It smacked Gulfport, Mississippi, instead, leaving bodies hanging from trees and floating in the gulf. Hundreds of people were killed, and 200,000 had to evacuate. If Camille had hit the more densely populated New Orleans area, the toll would have been much worse. At this point a Camille-type hurricane is about the only thing that could overwhelm New Orleans.
Except the levies were not used to maintain the levees.
The fatal flaw in the flood.