Letters from Heaven

Well, no, not Heaven, exactly, but I could swear the hand of God--or my mother's hand--had a part to play in this.

It was another exhausting, dirty day going through the rubble in our house with four guys from the packing company [Thomas, Terrance, Eddie and Ken]. H. is booked solid with reporting jobs this week, two days in NYC and the rest of the week in Toronto. So I'm going through the attic with those poor fellows who have to pack up decades worth of our stuff--photos, magazines, Halloween decorations, Christmas ornaments, lampshades, H.'s antique typewriters and posters from his hippie years, among a zillion other things.

And between the giant splinters and puffs of insulation, scattered among the nails that used to hold our roof together, I found the following very choice items on the worn wooden attic floor. It was almost as though someone was trying to tell me something.

1. Your sister has always loved you--and she's a remarkable person. Stepped on two letters that Sis sent me when she was in the Peace Corps in Western Samoa [she went when I was a high school sophomore]. They say wonderful things like "Be daring--ask Mark out on a pizza date" and "You can be Sports Editor. You are probably better than A.R., whoever he is." And, "I will be living with no electricity, so I'll probably go to sleep early and get up when the sun does."

2. Old letters tell a story--so maybe it's not so bad that H. is such a packrat. A typed letter I received in October 1977 from the young man who liked Sis before she left for the Peace Corps contains two sentences Sis and I loved: "If your sister should write, tell her to write to me. My mailbox gets hungry and turns surly if I don't get mail for prolonged periods of time."

3. Old friends hold your history. The letter Moey wrote in her flowy blue penmanship on July 10, 1980 refers to things I can't even remember--I gather I must have written to her about liking some army [?] guy on the beach? It was the time I went to Cape Cod for three whole weeks with my Mom--my Dad was there for a week, but then had to go back to work. I'll never forget that three-week block, but I do forget the army man. Not a single glimmer, though I do recall admiring a Harvard-looking blonde college guy who actually brought a typewriter to the beach. Moey also noted that I was running, which I did back then.

4. You've had a lifelong love of chocolate. And that's not such a bad thing--it's how you handle it. There it was, in my handwriting--the recipe for "1937 Brownies," made with squares of real chocolate. I have a vague memory of my mother, another chocolate lover, encouraging me to write it down!

5. Your husband's really smart. Have you lost sight of that? Found two of his blue examination books from Beloit College in Wisconsin--he was a philosophy major, I haven't read them yet, but plan to tonight and tomorrow night at bedtime. They talk about things like "Appearance & Reality" and "Polarity in Pre-Socratic Thought." Funny thing is, they're from fall 1977, the same time that Sis's beau sent his letter.

6.You used to be really good with money, you know. What happened? It freaked me out to look down and see the still pristine white index card on which I recorded exactly how I spent my first paycheck, earned at White's Norge Village Dry Cleaners the summer I was 14. I never forgot about that card but figured it was gone forever; I used to keep it in a little gray metal filebox. How strange that it turned up in a time when I am trying to learn how to spend and save better. But was spending almost everything I earned being good with money? Here's what I recorded, very neatly, after Sis took me to Alexander's in Paramus to shop:

First paycheck. Total, $17.76
$2 bill $2
peach shirt $4.30
gauze shirt $4.00
jeans $4.00
belt $1.00
Sis $1.00
Total $16.30

I can still feel the peach cap-sleeved tee that said "ALICE" in white iron-on letters. It was really soft and pretty and I had it for years.

Don't know what I did with the remaining $1.46!

Couldn't resist showing Figgy the card tonight.

"Jeans were only four dollars in the sixties?" she said, looking up from the all-important Facebook.

"Yes, but it wasn't the sixties--it was the seventies," I told her.

Good night.