Life’s Letters : Correspondence Collection Is a Legacy Parents Cherish

Our cousin Bobbie had a doll collection. All her dolls sat splendidly garbed on the shelves of a mahogany cabinet in her bedroom. The one aspect of her collection that I best remember is that never once was I invited to take the dolls from their pedestals for play.

My four sisters and I, on the other hand, played with our dolls. As a result, today we have a decidedly unimpressive collection. My ballerina doll survives, still wearing her pink tutu but lacking part of one appendage.

One year, my cousin, my older sister and I all received the same doll for Christmas--one that recited “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.” Some years ago, as an adult, spying my cousin’s doll on an upper shelf, I reached up and seized it. Amazingly, her doll was still in perfect condition and could still pray aloud. Our dolls had long before gone on to “doll heaven.”

My two daughters don’t have extensive doll collections either.

Their dolls were bathed, fed inappropriate food, spent time in sandboxes, thrown like footballs by their brothers in times of teasing and, yes, often left outside after a day of play to receive the following morning, when the sprinklers are activated, a shower.

Although a few dolls or doll parts and other toys might survive, it seems unlikely that they will be a legacy treasured by my children and later generations.

It is my hope that the collection that holds value for them will be the array of letters my husband and I have saved over the years. It is a collection not destined for display in a curio cabinet, but one meant to be held and read, to take the mind on a journey through time.

In neatly printed letters, is a letter my husband, at age six, wrote to his grandmother thanking her for the “nice books and comb” and heralding his most precious birthday gift--a “b-b-gun.” I have a letter I wrote my grandmother in Florida detailing the spirited life of an 8-year-old girl as well as a letter from a teacher to me at age 15 after the death of my father.

In a file labeled “marriage” are two favorite correspondences. One, to my husband in 1967 from the Methodist minister in his hometown, confirming that he would be pleased to assist in our marriage ceremony, and skillfully interjecting a paragraph asking if he had seriously considered the consequences of marrying a Catholic girl named Maureen and raising children.

The other letter substantiates a repayment of a $32.63 loan in May, 1968. Newly married, and both students, we had simply run out of loan and scholarship money before the end of the quarter and before the next quarter’s allotment. My husband made an appointment to see the dean about another loan to tide us over the remaining eight days. As the story is recounted, the dean reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a box labeled “petty cash.” It contained $32.63--at least $7.63 more than we had calculated we needed.

Sometimes at the grocery store the amount will come to $32.63 or one of our children will say, “it’s only $32” and I will smile, reflecting on the significance of this amount.

In each of our children’s files is a letter from their paternal grandfather discussing one of their accomplishments in his eloquent, laconic manner. Our youngest son’s file holds a letter from his maternal grandmother, read at his christening, detailing the story of a family whose French surname our son carries as a middle name.

Our children’s files also contain school records, report cards and letters that have filtered home from school. There is a letter from our older son’s nursery school explaining, in educational jargon, that, “mindful of the importance of a good learning environment,” he and his two best friends, Roman and Tobias, would be delegated to different classrooms following a summer session in which they had been placed in the same classroom.

Translated in layman’s terms, our son was to learn that school is fun, but not that much fun.

A letter in another file corrects the “non-suit” the oldest daughter received on a Monday in 1985 at school when the P.E. department felt that her shirt had not been laundered that weekend. The correction followed a letter explaining in detail that I had washed the shirt, but hesitated to use too much bleach. I had reminded the department of my previous year’s error of bleaching the school-stenciled “M. Brown” name out of her shirt and the subsequent admonishment.

I have framed a letter dated Jan. 28, 1985, from a third-grader named Mia thanking my daughter’s cello teacher and his students for a concert at her school. This daughter was a curly-headed 5-year-old at that time. “Thank you for entertaining us. I really enjoyed the concert. The music was beautiful. I think the cello is an interesting instrument. The curly haired girl was my favorite.”

For the 18-year-old son, facing a familial curse of early hairline recession, there is a letter in his file from a pediatrician in 1990, noting his good health and excellent cholesterol level--”thank your parents for those good genes.” This letter is a reminder that every family has good and bad genes.

I relish a letter from a 12-year-old camper stating that “I hate this place. It rains all the time. They have so many rules here, it’s like Alcatraz.” That was the only letter we received that summer from a girl who received the “outstanding camper award” in the closing ceremonies and spent six subsequent years in the same setting.

There is a recent entry in an October, 1992, journal of a 9-year-old declaring: “This was the worst day of my life.” His new bike was stolen in the afternoon and that evening we discovered that the pants he had left on the floor had been washed and dried--with his orthodontic retainer in the pocket. My hope is that he will read this entry in 50 years and confirm that, indeed, that was the worst day of his life.

The file labeled “Family” contains a letter from Santa, Christmas Eve, 1978.

It came to us via a wonderful Jewish couple who baby-sat our young children each Christmas Eve when we would go to midnight Mass. This couple, who tragically died in a car accident five years ago, played Santa in our house for several Christmases, eating the treats the children had put out for Santa, and writing a letter. In 1978, Santa writes of the “behavior report” he has received and “because of this fine report, I am leaving you presents you should enjoy. Try to be kind to other people throughout the year and the spirit of Christmas will creep into every day.”

Years from now, our children will not have shelves of well-kept dollies or trains that are appreciating in dollar value to remind them of their childhood.

Hopefully, our children’s legacy will be these letters, bits and pieces of their lives that have seemed worth holding on to.