It’s a small pile of yellow, fragile letters. One of them, from one of Nana’s suitors (written on Feb 5th, 1924) is deeply earnest: “Such a awful name but you’re a thief?! You stole my heart, and I feel miserable without it. You must return it or take the rest. Those charming “brown eyes” and hot lips were the cause of it all. Margaret, I would give the world and all that’s in it if I could just see you every night. . . instead I have to sit here and dream of you and wonder if my dreams will ever come true, or will my hopes and dreams all come tumbling to the ground as the snow flakes are now doing . . . Margaret, dear, do you really like me? Come now, don’t kid me. Do you like me just as a friend and nothing more? You ask me to tell you more about myself . . .”
Yeah. If she’s asking him that, maybe he’s getting a little ahead of himself? She evidently didn’t take him seriously, because I also have a series of long letters written by my grandfather—first to his girl (to my Nana, dated, interestingly, September 7, 1923) in which he says, “Honey, you remember I told you when I was over there last that I was going to have the boys order me a “Sister pin” for you – well, I’m going to get in touch with the boys and find who must do the ordering. Listen tho – I failed to emphacise the fact that you had to be either a sister or the one you are engaged to to wear it. Want to wear it? If you do I’ll have it ordered and can get it in a few weeks—“ [all sic]. The next is written to his newly pregnant little wife(my Nana), who’d gone home to Alabama on a visit. Then there are several he wrote home from a sanitarium when his kids were older and he was trying to recover from tuberculosis.
Other letters are written by Nana’s “cousin Emma,” actually the in-law of in-laws, who got the new young family started with a loan—one made with a very loose pay-back expectation, and for which she would accept not a cent of interest. And from other relatives, painting a picture of rich and loving family relationships, tightly interlaced. All of the letters are written gently, with some grace. It was another era.
There’s another box of oldish letters—these are mine. Letters I wrote home from college, and then from my own first home as a newly married, then newly mothered woman. Letters my mom kept every one of. These are a heck of lot less interesting to read. They’re awful, actually. They reveal a half cocky, half angst ridden drama queen who writes the life she felt like she should be having, glossing over the hitches and disappointments and frustrations that come with real life. I sound kind of idiotic, actually. And now I’m tempted to toss out the entire boxful.
Which leads me to think I better read through the journals I kept then, too. Do a little pruning. And that makes me wonder what the heck I was thinking, anyway, writing down all that stuff—leaving the space between the lines teeming with neon signs that flash: this woman is incredibly silly and obnoxious. I am willing to bet that President Kimball’s journals had no such signs.
Okay, to close this bit, I want to quote a little from one of my mother’s tiny journals. She wrote little, and most of it was pretty straight ahead day-to-day detail; we went there, we ate this, we watched that. But occasionally, she writes about her children—much, we children find, to our chagrin. (Mothers should just yell at us in real time and NEVER record their thinking in any kind of permanent form.) And sometimes, she wrote about the world she lived in.
Here, I have only a partial page: “ . . .from Iran before the lid blew off—another week and he could have been dead. What a wild world. Last night’s TV program with President Carter, Sadat and Began was a ray of hope. How far it can go is problematic, but we always hope for an interim of peace for a time. I’ve no doubt the world is winding toward the millennium very fast – so many things are too topsy turvy—women’s lib is probably one of the most destructive forces at work, however. It’s a sad fall out we see around us. I feel so strongly about woman’s true value as a wife and mother, it’s hard to see the strident, shallow voices win. The Lord must weep.”
Later: “ We have gotten a case of the alarms about the gasoline situation and J decided we needed mopeds to use in the future when gas is impossible to afford—so he bought two.”
When one of us borrowed some money to finish a basement: “With the cost of loans and the horrible rise in house costs, I have a feeling the kids will be in their home for some time. . . with the gasoline costs soaring, K (not me) isn’t able to take her husband to work very often. . . with the cost of gas—I suspect she will be without wheels for some time. We have all been very spoiled, I fear. . . we’re a bit worried about gas this summer . . . I’m sure gas will be 1.00/gal or more by that time. . . this gas shortage is so bad, I guess we won’t (go on vacation).”
That was written in 1978.
So I don’t know. Whatchya think? Is it a good thing that we leave a paper trail behind us? Obviously, at very least, there are lessons to be learned in the reading. Are hand written letters a better thing than computer files? Than emails? How personal should you get? Should you worry about sounding like an idiot? Should you only write happiness and success? Should you record every moment of angst? Or should you be balanced between gratitude and a frank report of the trials of your life? What will your great grandkids find out about you if they read your stuff? Does it matter if they like you for it?
One thing they will learn for certain—that you were, indeed, human.
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