A year ago, I could NOT have envisioned it.
My 50th post!!
Thank you for reading ❤️❤️
This blog, Collecting Pieces of Me, gives me purpose, it’s my outlet for healthy self-expression. Thankfully, my friends, my family, writing and THIS space have introduced me to MYSELF. I like myself😊
I knew as soon as I read it that I’d likely write something about a beautiful letter I received from a dear friend a couple weeks ago. That, and many other letters, have inspired this post.
I remember the day volunteers entered Ms. Siminack’s first grade classroom at Woodcreek Elementary. When these retired grandparents and “room mothers” told us that we’d each be CREATING our own, original, book, my head exploded with possibility.
Following is an excerpt from my memoir about my introduction to writing:
The importance of writing was established in grade school. Evidence lies in pages of lined (now yellowed) loose leaf paper. Impeccable cursive loops, intentional indentations were the only place I dared to tell the truth. I remember binding and writing my own book, in awe of the process. There is a vast difference between constructing one book and publishing and selling thousands of copies, but to my naïve, idealistic soul, it was only a matter of hard work and repetition.
Letter writing came later when I left a note for my grandfather while visiting my grandparents’ home. Another excerpt from my memoir:
Back in Louisville, my skinny legs climbed the stairs from my grandparent’s basement. I had just placed my note on Papa’s desk, propping the broad sheet of stark, white paper against his boxy computer monitor. I’d wanted to ensure that he would spot my note quickly.
My letter, I am certain, did not contain the following questions. I don’t think I understood myself, or even language, well enough to articulate them. What my heart and my soul were hoping to learn was this: Am I a good person? Do you love me? Can anyone love me? Are we, my family, going to be okay? Will you help me to understand whether life is worth living?
I did not express my aching and tormented thoughts using words and sentences though I remember feeling both anxious and hopeful as I climbed the glossy, painted stairs that led to my grandmother’s carpeted, knotty-pine and banana-scented kitchen. I had just taken a small, brave step towards understanding my role in this world and, most importantly, in my family.
Close to forty years later, I sent another letter to Papa, through the USPS this time. It had been over ten years since my grandmother’s death and a year and a half since I had seen Papa in person.
Also from my memoir:
Presently, stacks of notebooks, not one of them the same, sit in a bin on the floor of my recently claimed home office. The earliest entries were written as letters to a friend, Lisa, a lovely girl with whom I attended school for many years and lost touch long ago. I was, in fact, friends with two Lisas at the time and can’t be sure which Lisa I was addressing.
My original note to Lisa was written in a fuchsia, wide-ruled, spiral-bound notebook labeled “5th hour”. It and several other tattered notebooks were moved from my childhood home to a couple different locations by my parents. The notebooks have also survived at least three transfers under my own jurisdiction – all before I was able to grasp the full weight of their worth. I had written similar notes before and many since. The content was of trivial importance. One note, for example, complained about a friend who hadn’t invited me to her birthday party.
For reasons that I cannot recall, I never passed that note to Lisa. By the time it reentered my consciousness, weeks had passed and I remember thinking: “Hmmm, this is interesting! It hasn’t been that long, but I feel differently than I did when I wrote this letter.” I think I may have even attended the party I had complained about. This was a powerful lesson: When you record your thoughts you create your OWN, somewhat reliable, record of your life, your story.
When I turned twelve, Papa sent me a letter that would profoundly and positively impact my life. I’ve since gifted copies of his letter to my own children.
In 2020, during the height of quarantine, I began writing to Papa daily. My 102-year-old grandfather lived through the Great Depression, a childhood tussle with rheumatic fever (he was out of school for months and STILL finished the year as the top student in his class 🤷♂️). As a young man, he traveled to Europe to serve in World War II. He had never before left his home state of Illinois. Writing to Papa gave me incredible insight and perspective. My struggles were small when I considered what he had lived through.
Here’s one last excerpt:
My most recent penpalship with Papa began when I asked him during a phone conversation in the early days of our 2020 quarantine: “So what are you doing today?” I knew all too well that he had been cooped up for months, confined to his apartment on the twelfth floor of a large assisted-living facility. He had spent every day, all day, like this (except for his meals and an occasional nap on the communal patio in his two-bedroom apartment). Papa, ever the pragmatist, answered by way of a story.
He told me that he spent time, regularly, answering inquiries from organizations who had requested donations from him. He explained that he decides at the beginning of each year how to allocate his financial resources. He then admonished these “outfits” for spending money on postage – I’m fairly certain that they were bulk mailers so, twenty-five cents, mind you – to send him a letter every few months.
But twenty-five cents means something to someone who was born in the year 1919. Papa remembers when twenty-five cents could buy something: milk, cheese, bread, eggs, fabric, labor, straw, hay. It’s possible that when my grandfather was a boy, he could have bought any or all of these things with a single quarter. Papa could guarantee he would decline the solicitations in these letter either because he did not support the cause or because he had simply already allocated the funds.
And Papa felt compelled to stop this madness, this waste of time and energy, not to mention money and natural resources. I heard this over the phone on that gloomy day which might as well have been Groundhog Day as it was, assuredly, similar to many other anxiety-filled days before and since.
Papa explained to me with the utmost practicality that he writes back, “you know, as a courtesy”. At least weekly, but it was likely daily, Papa informed these organizations that he would not be donating to their “cause” and that the U.S. Postal Service would not forward mail to his next address. He would chuckle slyly as he said this last part. That was his way of letting me know that he had NO PLANS to move again at this stage of the game.
Papa’s sweetly sincere letters were almost assuredly being eaten by massive shredders. I wasn’t going to explain this to him. But I would make sure that he had something other than bulk mailers to open and respond to.
I wrote to him daily for months until, sadly, he died (Asphyxiation due to Covid pneumonia) in August of 2021. I will never know for certain whether he was the 1919 version of a “Covid baby”. I asked but he only chuckled at the question. He was born immediately following the 1918 flu pandemic. There was a large age gap between my grandfather’s older siblings and himself so a pandemic likely led to his conception. Covid’s delta variant lead his death.
For me, Papa’s death was a reckoning. I was devastated, traumatized and – for the first time ever – able to see the story of my life as a harrowing struggle to free myself and my family from intergenerational and insidious abuse, neglect and trauma.
In June of 2022, I contracted Covid myself. At the time and up until VERY recently, I stayed away from social media (I’m back on though! Will you please follow me? https://instagram.com/iamenvd?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=) Due to Covid, I spent many days alone, quarantining. That isolation inspired me to begin blogging in earnest. So, I suppose, this blog is my “Covid baby”;-)
Finally, with permission, the letter that initially inspired my 50th post . . . . Thank you for your beautiful words my dear friend, Traci ❤️
*carpe diem*
Collecting Pieces of Me 