In letters we reveal, we confess, we atone, we vent

By JoAnne Young

I learned some things this month as a finished up this month’s book club book, The Correspondent. I learned that I need to get back to writing letters. It’s fine to post a comment on social media, or jot a quick email to a friend or coworker or politician. But it seems not the same as a letter, in your own handwriting that is, at once, old school and next level, in an envelope. 

 

We reveal in letters. We commit self-therapy. We confess. We encourage. We let others know how we feel about them, rather than keep those feelings to ourselves. Sometimes we vent. We learn about ourselves, the normal and the quirky. (Mostly I like the quirky.)

 

Virginia Evans, author of The Correspondent, writes through her character Sybil: “If all this amounts to you as nothing more than drivel, then you might also consider a simpler value of the written letter, which is, namely, that reaching out in correspondence is really one of the original forms of civility in the world, the preservation of which has to be of some value we cannot yet see. ... The written word in black and white. It is letters. It is books. It is law. It’s all the same.”

 

Recently, I found an envelope of individual letters written to me many years ago from a class of elementary students I had talked to about my job and a recent trip. The teacher had assigned the letter writing, and I thought many of them were thoughtful. But one stood out. So I was moved to find an address for this young person, who is in her early 40s by now, and send her the letter and wish her well in the important job she has taken on. I have no idea if the address was correct and if she got the letter. But I really liked writing and sending it to her.  

 

Here are a few others I need to write. 

 

* “Dear Sen. Megan Hunt, 

     I saw in you from your first day in the Nebraska Legislature, that you would be, as sports and entertainment writers say, ‘one to watch.’ You proved my instincts to be right. Now after eight years, term limits mean you must leave and take with you your candor, conviction, honesty, intelligence and thoughtful approach to bills. 

     In your farewell speech this past week, you left us all with much to think about. You recognized that the responsibility of our elected lawmakers and governors is to bring the future into being. It can’t be designed on fear and anger, you said, but on opportunities for equality and freedom and an affordable lifestyle. On strengthening our culture.

    To do that, we must change the message for young people that they deserve to make at least a minimum wage for their work. For immigrants that they and their contributions are welcome in Nebraska. That women know best what decisions to make for their health and childbearing. That those who identify as LGBTQ belong in Nebraska as who they are. That the work of educators, researchers, scientists are valued and worthy of investment. 

     Thank you for your words, for the bills you fought for and for your caring for us all.”

 

* To the health care providers and all workers in the emergency department of the Bryan West Medical Center, where I volunteer: 

 

“Dear all ... Thank you for your caring for the people of Lincoln who find themselves on any given day hurting or scared, feverish or weak, nauseous, or broken in some way. You greet them in the kindest of ways ... those who clearly don’t want to be there, those who are filled with fear, are in tears, or for whom you are a target of their frustration or anger. Thank you for choosing hospital-based care. You are needed.” 

 

* A short note of appreciation to whoever thought up this meme: “You are the result of 3.8 billion years of evolutionary success. Act like it.” 

 

* An apology to the young versions of my children for any physical injuries I caused. 

 

     “Dearests: I tried so hard to be the guardian of your adorable little bodies, to live by that oath: first, do no harm.  But it happens. To my firstborn, I say, ‘Eighteen months into your babyhood, you toddled out of your bedroom as I told you, “Hurry, Carson, we have to go pick up Daddy at work.” My mind on getting out of the house, I moved quickly to get you into the hallway to leave, not noticing that you had put four little fingers between the door jamb and the open bedroom door. I tried to shut the door behind you, but it wouldn’t close tightly. I pulled on it again to hear it click, hearing instead your screech, and then wail, piercing the hallway air. I am so sorry. When I got you untangled from the doorway, I saw I had flattened three of your beautiful, until that moment perfect, fingers. 

 

     It wasn’t the only time I made such a mistake, kids. A few years later I pulled shut a Plymouth Voyager side door, smashing four little Elizabeth fingers between the metals of the sliding door and the minivan frame. Did I say how sorry I am enough times? You may have gotten over the pain in a short time. I did not.”

 

* I wrote a partial letter to a friend from work a few years ago as she was retiring. And here I will confess a terrible shortcoming: I write but sometimes never send the letter. I think it is incomplete and I need to write more. But then I get busy with life and forget, and it sits there waiting for me. 

 

So I share it here, today and in part, to Cindy Lange Kubick with apologies that it is several years late. 

 

“Cindy: 

     You came to the Journal Star about 10 years after me. I remember thinking, this woman is a bold writer, a woman who can take on subject matter I just hadn’t considered. You wrote about hair in your nose and hair on your chin. And strippers. And sex. I thought: I could learn from this woman about bold writing and taking risks. I never did it as well as you, but you helped me to keep pushing to improve, all the way to today. 

     When the papers merged and tension was high, you wrote: “Who wants to write birthday cards when she can tap dance with words across the page of a daily paper?” You stayed a while, and so did I, and we both loved that dance up to the minute we took off the tap shoes.

     I’m a big fan, not only of your writing, but of you, the woman who feels free to eat her cookie while waiting for her entrée. Thank you. And please keep me on your Valentine cards list. I love watching your grandchildren grow.” 

 

One last thought.

 

* As Sybil in The Correspondent did, I would like to write to all those people whose books, poems, essays and photographs I so enjoy and learn from. It would be a full-time job. Here’s a thank you to one who is more than a thousand years gone. Maybe the vibration of his name being written will penetrate the temporal continuum. 

 

     “Dear Rumi, 

     I take encouragement from your poem “The Guest House,” in which you compare being human to a guest house with its new arrivals each morning, be they joys, or dark thoughts, some momentary awareness, or sorrows that sweep your house empty, but may be clearing you out for some new delight. Meet them at the door laughing, you wrote, and be grateful, ‘because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.’ 

     I, we all, need this more than ever. Thank you for the reach through time with it.” 

 

 And thank you to Virginia Evans for the letter writing nudge. 

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