This weekend I tackled the 1950s box of Mom's letters. There I was re-introduced to an 18 year old free spirited young woman through my letters home to Minnesota from Calvin College. What fun this is! I quite like her!
Also found an assortment of letters from siblings - to be returned to them. And then there were the weekly letters from my grandparents. Many to Mom from her Mom in Michigan. Her Father was a pretty prolific correspondent as well! And from the grandparents in South Dakota. I can almost hear their long gone voices as I read! Even my Grampa K - although I can't read his letters. They are all in Dutch.
Not to forget the news that flowed between my Parent's siblings and themselves! And those between my Parents when they were separated by visits home or meetings away. News of loss when Grandma V died. News of illness or scheduled surgeries and the unspoken fear that underlies such worries; fear that is ensconced in Faith and cradled in words of Trust in God. Many of the envelopes hold comforting blankets woven of words from friends and family far and wide.
Add to these the letters from Aunts and Uncles and other extended family, along with friends and former parishioners, and you have a cedar chest full of envelopes bursting with surprises and a cross section of American life beginning in 1926 when our parents first met. I didn't need the cedar chest, but how I love the letters!
The problem is time. I wasn't making much progress after separating the envelopes into decades. I'd gone through the love letters of the 1920s, and some of the late '30s when I came along, but then hadn't visited them for over a year. Until this weekend when I intended to find the young girl who married over fifty years ago and find the letters I'd written home when our family was young.
Most of those will be in the '60s and '70s boxes and it might take a while to get to them! Right now I have many more to read from the girl I once was and her parents and siblings. Stories of crushes (not only mine!) and Mom's trips to her family and Dad's pleas for her to hurry home because he is getting skinny - or his delightful descriptions of our family life while she is gone. Or his familiar quip on sleeping in: that he 'stood on his back too long' that morning.
So it's back to '50s for now. Don't know how long I'll be gone, but I've been there before so am sure I'll enjoy the visit!
-JoMae
8/9/10
