Letters from Home

Lately I have been rummaging through boxes of old letters written by me to my folks and by them to me, and those to and from siblings and friends over the years. They are treasure chests filled with tangible bits of the past so unlike today’s electronic missives. These messages were penned and folded and licked by loved ones now long gone and opening them engages all the senses. A tearstain here, there a lipstick smudge, a pressed flower, a spatter of kitchen grease, colored crayon scrawling, all shrouded in a lingering perfume of musty attic. Old letters are not just read - but touched and smelled. Why some of our correspondence from the past was saved and others thrown away is a mystery. Were some kept as cherished mementos, historical references, proof of love, incriminating evidence, or for future blackmail? They are records of trips, births, deaths, aspirations, joys and despairs - all of the significant hurdles we surmount through life. Events we have triumphed and fretted over and noted down in dispatches to loved ones. We scan the margins of these remnants of the past for little asides, clues that may reveal new answers to old questions. Now and then we come across omissions, and painfully regret those things never written. Letters we wrote years ago reunite with the ones we have received and their long forgotten conversations are rewound and replayed on crumbly papers. Personal stories, anecdotes jotted down on the backs of postcards, on fancy stationery, in greeting cards, on cocktail napkins, clipped newspaper articles annotated with ball point pen, snapshots and ticket stubs, all combine to chronicle a family ‘history’. They get sorted and resorted, tied into bundles, stored in boxes and plastic Ziploc bags. We catalogue them, grouping them by year and writer, classifying and reclassifying them according to ever-changing schemes. The process awakens memories which have been slumbering, raising them up to hazily stretch and drowsily mingle with current thoughts. Like resurrected zombies, they arise and shuffle among the living, moving and speaking once more, reiterating long buried conversations. Our inner ears grow sharper over the years and prick up on phrases once passed over and dismissed as trivial, but now blaringly significant. The study of Philosophy and poetry puts great significance upon the meaning and specificity of language, requiring careful and repeated readings to absorb their content. With this in mind, I crisscross my fields of letters again and again hoping to glean a few new grains of meaning with every passage.