I just turned one of those awkward ages, when you feel like not enough's been accomplished and there's an awful lot to do in what could be a relatively short time. I go through this psychic angst every 5 or 10 years or so, and find that the only cure is to reorganize, re-evaluate, do something. Sometimes all it takes is a re-organization of the pantry, or collecting all the stuff that I've mentally set aside for a yard sale and then actually have one. This time I decided to hoe out the storage bins.
The storage bins are literally that: a triplet of plastic bins and a wooden box and several filing cabinets full of stuff I've saved for - well, decades, as it turns out. Into these have gone every possible thing I thought I might be sentimental about in my dotage, or that my adoring fans and future biographers would be eager to discover after my (still pending) rise to fame. In a sentence, pretty much every scrap of paper I've ever written or doodled on, or, in later years, printed out.
The first thing that got tackled was the easiest: time to dump all those mouldering files of notes for articles I wrote 30 years ago; pretty sure no one will care about those, even my future biographer. Second: the multiple copies of all the old articles I wrote 30 years ago, especially the ones on (now defunct) computer technology for (now defunct) computer magazines. Into the recycle bin, don't look back! Save one copy for old times' sake.
That cleared one filing cabinet, and thus far the process was painless and was starting to feel pretty good. Next I tackled that pile of old magazines, saved because there was something special about them. This, too, was an easy toss into the recycle bin: not hard, nowadays, to buy a magazine or newspaper in a foreign language, organic farming practices have either evolved or are no longer difficult to find literature on, and the mildew skinning these old copies might be organic, but definitely was not healthy. And what on earth did I save all these other magazines for? No idea. Poof! One good toss and the contents of that filing cabinet were history. Note to self: the cellar needs a dehumidifier.
Feeling pretty good now - look at all the effort I just saved my niece, who won't have to sort through that recycled mess after my demise! Next on my list: the plastic bins and wooden box.
And this is where I got lost.
One plastic bin was from the days of my youth: notebooks full of childhood poems and stories - set that aside to take a tour through later; old school essays - recycle bin; grammar school "literature magazines"- another easy toss; and set aside the large bundle of tied-up-in-ribbon letters from schooldays friends to look at when this project is finished. Next bin: oh! This bin is also full of letters, from college friends and friends at college, and from family to this homesick college girl. The wooden box turns out to be yet another repository of dozens of letters from friends and family received during the early years of my marriage. Third bin: once again, nothing but bundles of letters.
Literally hundreds of letters, most of them several pages long, written mostly by hand, some in beautiful script, some in childish scrawl (usually with crayon drawings to go along), some printed, some nearly impossible to read. Some are in pencil, some in ink, some written on the backs of calendar pages, on lined tablet paper, on lovely note paper, on cards, on paper napkins, on air-mail paper, on postcards, on hand-made paper. Business stationary from both my beloved, but long-dead grandfathers; a note my father wrote on hospital stationary when he was having a back operation and I was a little girl, reassuring me he'd be home soon. Letters from grade school pen pals, from summer friends who lived in other states in the winter, from my first (10-year-old) boyfriend, from high school and college boyfriends, from my best high-school friend describing her amazing bike rides to school and the plays she'd been to London to see during the semester she spent in England, and years later, describing her struggle with anorexia and her escape from a controlling boyfriend. There are letters from my French-Canadian grandmother talking about her bus trips to various cities, and from my next-door grandmother reporting on the progress of the garden, her canning, the needlepoint or hooked rug she was working on, what she and Gramp had for dinner, the weekly trip to the dump. Letters from my mother encouraging me to do something besides study when I was down in the dumps in school; from a long-time boyfriend after he graduated from college and I moved to another college several states away. Letters from high school friends who came out as gay in college and how they were received; from a trans college friend who was transitioning after I changed colleges; from my nieces' au pairs after they returned to Europe, from my students who moved to Europe, from a friend who thought we'd be surprised to hear he'd moved to Japan instead of to Colorado. There are letters from friends before, during, and after difficult marriages, and from friends of friends with whom I shared interests in music or literature or t'ai chi.
All these letters, as I looked at them again, some of them a lifetime later, brought me back into each writer's life so strongly it sometimes took my breath away. For much of the time when these letters were written, we didn't have much money, and long-distance phone calls were an expensive treat we couldn't often indulge in.
We'd write to each other, sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, sometimes daily, eagerly answering a letter received within hours. Work would stop; we'd pour out our passions or heartbreak to each other, or share the homely things that we each would be doing in our own separate places: how many quarts of tomato juice we'd canned, how many packages of beans frozen, how many pints of berries picked, and are your peas up yet, ours are 4 inches high already!
They tell of baking bread, of walking dogs, of the fox we saw with a mouse in its mouth, of the snapping turtle laying her eggs in the rock garden, of the story we wrote and sent with fingers crossed to a publisher, of music discovered that caused the spirit to soar, of long train trips across the country, of lost loves and new loves, of where our minds wandered when we were still awake in our workspaces after midnight. Sometimes a letter would come with a photo enclosed, or a drawing, or a child's story, or a pressed flower. Sometimes the envelope would be adorned with hand-drawn art or an especially lovely stamp. The air mail letters are on thin blue paper that cleverly folded, origami-like, to become its own envelope which needed to be carefully sliced open with a knife once received.
From recent years there are fewer letters. I wish I could say that email has become the new post - but not so, not in my experience anyway. A long email as often as not elicits a short response, or none at all, or a response not full of story about the respondent's life and loves, but full, instead, of links to funny videos or cartoons; and I doubt many of this kind of correspondence are printed out and saved for decades, as my stash of letters have been. I think that the speed and ever-present ability to make contact that the internet brought us, has also caused us to rob ourselves of a richness in our communications that kept us close, and deeply a part of, each others' internal and external lives.
One precious letter I have is from my grandmother's grandmother, treasured and saved and passed on for more than 140 years, describing an amazing day in the 19th century. This letter has been read and wondered over by four generations, and I'm about to pass it on to the fifth and sixth generation. This one letter - four smallish sheets of paper, written on front and back, by itself tells me so much about my great great grandmother's life as a young wife and mother that I couldn't have possibly known any other way; it's a history lesson as well as a window into an ancestor who I've only met through my grandmother's stories about her grandmother. As I re-read it, after many years, I realized that my niece would have trouble reading the beautiful script - her generation pretty much sees only printed text, rarely anything written by hand more complicated than a grocery list; and my great-niece, now only 4, may never be able to read the letter except in the transcript I've made for her.
I wonder whether there will be anything I've written so precious as to be delicately unfolded and read, and reread, for more than a century? And I wonder whether the next generations will ever be left with the treasure I've got - me, a person whose rise to fame is still pending, who owns a richness stored in plastic bins, of the thoughts and longings and passions and anguish and day-to-day life and soul-searching recordings of the lives of so many other people, whose elevations to fame are also still pending?
Originally published in the Concord Monitor, June 22, 2016, as "A Life In Boxes."
People have asked me about the very old letter I referred to in the article – here ‘tis, and an explanation follows.
Letter to Miss Flora J. Nelson, East Hardwick, Vermont; postmark obscured, but Feb 20 VT can be read. This letter was written in pencil on folded, lined paper. The letter is from Abigail Webster Colby. The Ralph she refers to is her son; GR would be her first husband, George, who died in Concord not many years later, crushed between two rail cars – he worked for the railroad.
The transcription was made by Abigail’s great, great granddaughter in January, 2016, without corrections. Unreadable words are shown by [?] in the transcription. I don’t know who Flora was, nor how Abigail came to have the letter back in her possession.
Upside down on the first page, above the date:
Behold how large a letter I have written to you with mine own hand. Perhaps they would not be so tiresome if I wrote shorter ones and oftener.
Weare Aug 14th 1881
My never forgotten though greatly neglected friend Flora
Have you forever erased my name from the tablet of your memory If so I crave your forgiveness for my sin of omission and beg you will once more try me and see if I will not do a little better Where are you and what are you doing
I shall direct this to E.H., not-knowing whether or no you are at Woodstock. If it be not too late accept my heart-felt congratulations
I think you may well be proud of your certificate Deary me how I want to see you. We are all well G.R. and myself at present Ralph was quite sick last week Doctor said it was caused by worms. He is a big two year old boy now chatters like a black bird and dodges from one juice of mischief to another like a veritable will o wisp. I often wonder what I should do if I had two or three as near of an age as some do. He has got now where he trys to say every thing and makes some curious mistakes
He says “shoo fly boddie me, I’ll [?] wind” He went out with me berrying and saw a grasshopper said, Mama, drasshopper open leef see Ralph. Oh we have had such terrible hot weather and such thunder showers I never witnessed before and have no desire to again One commenced at four oclock one afternoon and it never ceased till after four the next morn It was one continual roar and blaze ever so many buildings were burned in this town and the adjoining ones I suppose of course you have seen the comets I think if any one is inclined to be very superstitious that this year would be trying to their nerves. Not long ago one morning, about four Oclock we were astonished by one peal of thunder and one single flash of lightning but that set fire to a set of buildings not far from here and burned them to the ground
Tuesday Sept 6th
I dropped my pencil after writing of one phenomena and I take it again to write of another It has been a frightful day here I should like to know if you have witnessed the like. It has been a veritable dark day I don’t know what time the darkness began but at four this morning it was so intensely dark that as I lay in bed I was unable to see a window or any thing else in the room but gradually it grew lighter and when we sat down to breakfast at six we were able to eat without a light but I never saw such a sight the whole heavens turned to gold The grass and leaves were a dark green almost a black and clothes spread upon the grass looked as though they had been dipped in saffron dye I washed this fore noon with my tub directly in front of a window and then could hardly discern the clean clothes from the dirty At noon I really thought we should be obliged to have a light and it has been worse since then At half past one it was frightful over head burned one sheet of blaze Our countenances assumed a blood red hue Some of the chickens went to roost and those that did not groped about with their heads close to the ground The crickets chirped as loud as they do on a summer evening Taken all in all it was the most awe inspiring scene I ever witnessed I felt like exclaiming “How wonderful are Thy works O Lord” At present writing (four oclock) it seems a good deal lighter and as I look off at a distance it seems very smoky It seems as though there must be large fires raging some where I can account for it in no other way Did you know you left your corset cover at my house You never have written of it Tell me what I shall do with it send it to you or keep it till I see you When think you that will be Didn’t you promise to send me your picture If my memory holds good you did And I am quite anxious to hear of those two love lorn swain Which is which as all neither of them whicher I expect by this time you have one of the Woodstock males on the string Such is life I will send you a card Carlton gave [?] two You perceive Carlton has at last got a job on the railroad but it is on the same train his father is conductor on so he boards at home and I imagine misses some of the fun he anticipated for all that he told you he was “no such a fellow as that, Did you give Mrs Carter Ralphs picture and what did she say
I have thought and dreamed of her a great deal lately and am going to write to her very soon I don’t hardly know where to address but I believe South Craftsbury is her address
Sept 16th Shall I ever get this letter finished and mailed Echo answers Yea horse
I am going to bite it off right here hoping you will forgive my negligence and answer directly Now don’t wait it seems an age since I heard from you With untold love I remain yours forever Abbie
My Internet research finds this information: Sept 6, 1881 was called “The Yellow Day”; a mist-like yellowness turned the sky as far east as the New Jersey shore and as far north as the Canadian border very dark all that day, and colors to shine oddly and intensely yellow. There was a massive forest fire in Michigan (called the “Thumb Fire,” referring to the area it was located in) which burned millions of acres, covered 4 counties, and killed at least 282 people. On the 6th the smoke from this fire was blown east and caused the strange darkness and color intensity. It was so dark many businesses and schools had to close because it was too dark to work indoors.
1881 had been an odd year: in July, a comet was visible; in April, a rare celestial event lined up the Earth with Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune; and in addition, many people were aware that in the 16th century, a prophet called Mother Shipton had prophesied that the world would come to an end in 1881. After all the other strange events of the year, when the world went dark on Sept. 6 and there was not an eclipse to explain it, many people decided the end of the world had arrived. Up on the roofs, waiting for the heavens to open and take them in.
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