Correspondence

My mom's letters to her friend "Rue"

      This weekend, I arrived at my parent's to find a totally empty house. As per my usual habit, the first thing I did was check to see if I had received any mail. I hadn't but there was a whole stack of letters from the 1970's that my mother had written to one of her high school friends. I don't know how or why these letters are back in my mom's possession, but I as I was looking through some of them (Seriously, how could I NOT snoop?), I was hit by a feeling of loss.

     It's pretty silly, I know, considering that I've never really needed to hand write letters (thank you technology), to feel the crazy nostalgia of paper correspondence that I am. But these are beautiful documents of my mother's young adulthood and my kids will never be able to experience what I did as I was looking through them. It was like being able to go back and time and experience my mother in a way that I never would have thought possible. 

It's like a movie picture, isn't it?

     I have always known about my mom's high school friends. In fact, I was supposed to marry one of their sons (such a shame THAT didn't work out) She has had this same group of friends since she was in middle school and they still get together once a year, just so they don't lose touch entirely. I had always thought there was just the four of them, but apparently a girl named Ruth (Rue) moved away after middle school. The group of them wrote her letters until junior year and went on multiple trips to visit her and vice versa. My mother, who wouldn't even let me ride a bus when  I was 20 years old, took a bus out of the state with three of her girlfriends to visit Rue when they were 15! I was flabbergasted (and a little miffed).


One of my mother's letters. Her handwriting is the same today!

      Anyway, you would not BELIEVE her penmanship at 15. It was so strange to see the cursive that I instantly associate with my mom next to big bubble letters and goofy drawings. Even stranger was reading how she wrote about boys, clothes, and dances, just like I would have when I was 15. And these little side notes on the envelope saying things like "Love your neighbour" on the outside flap and "Just don't let anyone see you!" on the inside. It is INCREDIBLE to think of my prim, proper, straight-laced (how many other nice ways are there to say 'uptight'?) mother talking about boys with "hot bods" and throwing around phrases like "the shits" and "wicked bitch." It's a beautiful thing to know that there was a time when she wasn't perfect and moral. At one point, she talks about the one boyfriend she had in high school and how he asked her to go steady, but she wouldn't because she liked looking at other boys too much! All my life, I have believed that my mother has ALWAYS hated boys and then, BOOM! one letter changes my whole outlook on her.

     Now I'm trying to figure out who I can write letters to. I tried writing to Kris in the first year of our relationship (since we lived hours apart, I figured it would be a good way to bond). However, he can't read my handwriting and never bothered to write me back (considering it was much easier to call me or shoot me a text), which killed the romance of it. I don't mind too much, his handwriting is atrocious (at least mine is legible), and he was practically born with the ability to type. But, it would be so lovely to be able to look back at our letters 30 years from now and remember how we once were. That still leaves me with the dilemma of who to write to though.

   

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