I have a packet of letters tied with green ribbon in the right-hand bottom drawer of my desk. The backs of the envelopes are covered with hand-drawn illustrations: peace signs, Crazy Cat lettering, flowers and smiley faces (the original ones). I scribbled the departure time and bus number of the Greyhound that took us to the very first Earth Day on the back of one. And the address of the old Stone coffee house in Boston where I played my first real audition is scrawled in red ink on another. "I miss you!" streams raggedly around the corner of one particularly fat one.
Some of them contain actual letters. Others contain poetry most of it bad but heartfelt and full of angst appropriate for the times. There are lyrics to songs that we promised to learn and pencil sketches of places and people that we met somewhere long since forgotten. Some of them are plain white and some have psychedelic colors. One is a brilliant orange paisley. I especially like that one.
The Captain found them when we were sorting through "stuff" to keep or throw away in preparation for moving.
"What about these?" Holding them up for me to pass judgment on.
"Oh! Those are my old love letters!" I smiled radiantly.
"Really?" He looked like he had just poked his nose into a three-day old fish bucket.
I snatched them back from him. "Yes, really." I stroked them gently. "I have to save them."
"Why?" He was getting ready to be insulted. I could tell from the way his eyes went from blue to grey.
"Because I loved this man once. He is the father of my son. I spent over 20 years with him." I cuffed him gently on the chin. "Because you love me, and these are a part of me."
He huffed in his British Sea Captain way, "Oh, wellIf you put it that way", and put them back into the "keep" box. I let him throw away the next three or four items he held up and that seemed to settle the matter.
I didn't have time to think much more on the event at the time moving being the challenge that it is even in the best of times, and those were not the best of times for me. I had just decided to take "early retirement" from my high-tech career and was having significant separation anxiety about it. I was selling my old farmhouse; buying a house in Maine; giving away about 50% of my possessions and getting married again. In short, I felt sort of like the ribbing on the sweater of my life was unraveling. But in the end I managed to live through it. I even had a few moments of grace, sprinkled in here and there.
And I came across them again just last week. I was searching for a CD I know I tucked somewhere safe. Which, of course, also means I tucked it somewhere I would never think to look until I had exhausted all other possible locations. That drawer was my next-to-last place to look. (The CD was in my sewing box. Where else?) And there they were. Same little green ribbon. Same letters. I haven't read them in years. I have no intention of doing so.
But I am still saving them. I am a living collage of my experiences. The day my son was born; the night my father died; my very first kiss, and yes the remainders of lovers and friends. All of these things form the collaborative chaos that is "me".
Without them I would only be a life-sized cardboard cutout of the person I am. They give me depth. They teach me humility. They urge me to have courage. And they remind me to be kind. And someday, when I am gone and my son is sorting through "stuff" to keep or throw away, he will read them and smile about the people who were his parents.