The Power of a Letter

My thoughts today are focused on letters – not the letters of the alphabet, but the result of arranging those alphabetical letters into a charming and old-fashioned thing called personal correspondence. You know how much I love finding packets of letters such as those I shared with you some time back tracing an early 20th century romance in Akron. What got me to thinking about it again is a challenge extended by fellow bookseller Kristian Strom in his recent blog post. Having spent an afternoon with a noted writer from Kansas he was struck by the fact that this fellow actually gets letters – real, honest-to-God-and-Emily-Post letters delivered in the mail as though it were the 1940’s. Not only did this make Kristian long for letters of his own, but motivated him to revive the lost art of correspondence by challenging his readers to join him in a 21 day stint of writing and mailing personal letters to friends, family, and favorite authors. While I didn’t formally sign up for the challenge – I don’t think I know 21 people to send letters TO – I am definitely going to send at least one. By the time you get to the end of this post you’ll know the recipient.

Ever since I was a kid I loved letters and practically welded myself to the mailbox in hopes of getting one. For years I had two penpals, a girl named Astrid from Sweden and another girl named Bridget from County Clare, Ireland. I acquired the first one through the kid’s page in the Akron Beacon Journal and the second was a niece of my Irish grandmother’s Irish friend, Nan Rainey, who if she had been British would have given Mary Poppins serious cause to polish up her resume. But it wasn’t until I was in high school that I acquired the ultimate penpal. I apologize if I’ve told you this story before, but I don’t think I have, and if I did it’s one of my better ones anyway, so pour a cup of coffee, take a break, and settle back.

It was Christmas 1968 and I was a reluctant member of the Future Teachers of America. I say reluctant because I had no intention of being a teacher. As soon I could get an education and break loose from bondage I was off to New York City to write the Great American Novel. My mother, however, believed that my career choices were limited to just three jobs – teacher, nurse, or nun. Seeing as how I’m not patient enough for the first, too squeamish for the second, and not nearly holy or quiet enough for the third, I didn’t give a nansecond's notice to any of them. To keep the peace though I did join the Future Teachers of America, but only for the Christmas party which was enough to get my membership duly noted in the yearbook and my mother off my back.

As it turned out, I needed one meeting AND one service project to make the yearbook, but as luck would have it, the party presented a made-to-order option so easy it was almost cheating. Pages of the Akron Beacon Journal adorned with festive red and green garland shrouded the blackboard that frigid afternoon, each filled with the names and addresses of local guys serving in Vietnam. Most of the Future Teachers got pretty jazzed over the idea of keeping up the morale – so much so that they tried out all the last names with their own to find the one that sounded best just in case there should be a romantic conquest involved. After all, in those days one of the big attractions of teaching was having the summer off to spend with your future kids. I, of course, was off to the Big Apple, so there was no WAY I wanted to snag a husband from godforsaken Ohio of all places. Besides, I had a boyfriend who was making me crazy enough. The way I saw it, practically anyone would do, so I sauntered over to the boards, planted my short self in front of the first page I saw, and only briefly mulled over the names at eye level. Eric struck me as a good name – solid, dependable, the kind of guy deserving of a package of cookies and a letter from a teenage girl with literary aspirations. So Eric Kindig it was. I pulled out a pen from my bookbag and crossed the name off the list with a deep sense of satisfaction. Whew -- off the hook!

Immediately replies poured in to the Future Teachers, but not for me. By the time I’d given up on it I didn’t even care because almost every single letter my friends received was invariably stupid and/or vacuous. When the burning question is “what are your measurements?” (mine were something like ten-five-ten) you know you haven’t missed a darn thing. But then one day in late January I returned home from school to find a letter so thick it was actually a packet. My mother was ironing and I was standing over the heat register in my plaid Catholic girl uniform skirt (which I always kept fetchingly rolled at the waist) reading the letter. Even as I write this I am back in that dining room in south Akron in the tall ugly white house which the city ultimately, and mercifully, demolished for urban renewal.

But the letter! Oh my God, to this day I can remember the blood shooting through my veins like a shower of liquid meteors. The guy could write! The guy had a college degree! The guy read books! Currently he was reading Michner’s Hawaii and pondering the travesty of the missionaries attempts to squelch the native culture. The guy cared about people too! Pages and pages told the story of the wandering children of war, especially the little Vietnamese soda girls whom the soldiers taught to swear and then laughed when they innocently repeated it. The guy also had a girlfriend. A considerable section was devoted to the girl back home who was a REAL teacher with a passion for her work, unlike me who was an out and out fake in the teaching department. In fact, he had just returned from an R&R spent with the lovely Pat in Hawaii which was why he was so late to respond. I guess that part didn’t make a big impression.

“Mom,” I said. “I’m going to marry this guy.”

Of course she laughed. And rolled her eyes. And told me I was off on yet another one of my “tangents”,  which on the surface was probably true.

Except that it wasn’t. Two and a half years later I did marry him. We met January 17, 1970, my freshman year in college, got engaged February 6, 1970, and got married June 20, 1970. I was nineteen years old to his 26 and we had never even exchanged pictures, much less talked about romance. As you know, we celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary last month.

So, in the end, I never did move to New York City. In fact, I ended up only about twenty-five geographic miles from where I started, but in other kinds of miles it was more than halfway around the world. I didn’t become a novelist either, but for a long time people actually did pay me to write stuff, and I’m still writing stuff here. The important thing is that a letter, written on pale pink stationery in schoolgirl penmanship, changed my life in ways I could not possibly have imagined. I suppose some people would say that I gave up my dreams too soon. But they would be wrong.

I am, and always will be, a woman of letters.