It took me two hours to clean out a box 9" x 10" x 10" deep.
It was filled with miscellaneous sundries, mostly letters that for one
reason or another I have saved over the years.
I threw away a lot, but kept the special ones. I also
read a lot of the letters
The thing is that it was like a walk through the last 30 or
so years of my life. I found letters from a few people who have
dropped me from their lives. It was nice to remember when we were
friends and all was good.
I had forgotten that I corresponded with Gilbert's sister in
Oklahoma for quite awhile after his death. We probably parted company
when I told her I had started seeing a therapist to deal with the grief over
his death and she told me that "therapy is only for crazy people" and yet
she mourned his death for the rest of her life, while I managed to work my
way through it.
There were many glowing letters from people I don't remember
thanking me for doing things that I don't remember doing, but it was a real
boost to my ego to know that people, at some time, felt fondly about me.
The best of this was a letter from the high school music
teacher thanking me for a thank you letter I had sent him, after our last
kid left his jazz choir class. The letter was beautiful and there is
no way I can throw that away.
There is a typed letter dated 1987 that is unsigned and I
can't figure out who it's from but I was amused to read, "Don't worry about
getting a modem. My modeming affair is on the skids already.
Just one of those things (Very time consuming!) And it would
certainly not be cheaper to send letters over the phone line rather than my
UB post Just the novelty of it was appealing for awhile..."
H/She then goes on to talk about the advantages of having a modem, but ends
up feeling it will never catch on.
Wish I knew who wrote this letter. I'd like to see if
he/she is on Facebook. :)
There were, of course, the letters from people no longer
with us. Lots of letters from my friend Will Connelly and a very long
missive from my friend Diane in Seattle, whom I still miss very much.
There were also several "what I'm doing now" letters from the founder of the
Sunshine Children's Theater, who left Davis many years ago. I decided
it was time to throw these away.
There were letters from Yvonne Kalman and Donald Madgwick.
Kalman was the daughter of Emerich Kalman, the composer of the operetta
Countess Maritza, which The Lamplighters performed. I had
found a letter from him among Gilbert's belongings after he died and I wrote
to him to let him know of Gilbert's death. We had a brief, nice
correspondence and I was looking forward to meeting him when we traveled
with The Lamplighters to a Gilbert & Sullivan festival in Buxton, England.
We met...and he was this nerdy, really unlikeable little guy. We did
not see each other further during the festival.
As for Yvonne, I interviewed her before we did her father's
operetta and she was a very nice lady. She made a special trip from
Los Angeles to attend Gilbert's memorial service and I think she shocked the
bejeezus out of her because she came to the house first for dinner.
His family, myself, and his best friend had been dealing with Gilbert's
death and all the "business" concerning a death and planning a memorial
service and we were, by this time, pretty giddy. I think she was
shocked at our lack of respect and our dumb jokes and giggling.
I received more letters than I remembered from my high
school typing teacher and life-long friend, Sister Anne. She wrote
eloquent letters in that beautiful handwriting of her. I last saw her
when I was at a conference in St. Louis and she brought me to the
motherhouse, where she now lived, in Indiana. Later, she sent me a
lovely beautiful videotape, which I treasure. She then wrote that she
had non-Hodgkins lymphoma and it was a shock, when we sent an announcement
of Ned and Marta's wedding, to learn that she died a few months before.
I decided to keep her letters.
There were also more letters than I remembered receiving
from my old Physics Department boss, now an emeritus professor from Carnegie
Melon. I saw Fred about 20 years ago when I spent the weekend with him and
his wife. He had many health problems at that time, so it's a surprise to me
that he is still living, into his late 80s. He doesn't write long
chatty letters any more, but he does send e-mail once or twice a year, after
I send him a birthday card and a Christmas card.
Awhile ago, I linked to a
video
that I found on YouTube, the first of four, in which he tells the story
of his family and how they escaped the holocaust and came to the United
States. I learned a lot that I'd never known about him before, and
when I wrote to him to congratulate him on the video, he was surprised I had
seen it because he had no idea it was on the internet.
I cringed a little when I saw the familiar handwriting of my
father in the stack of letters. Our last years were not good and he
would send me letters that were so hurtful that whenever a letter arrived, I
would put it next to me on the couch and hold it at arm's length and just
glance at it a little bit at a time. So I wondered what this letter
contained and why he had sent it.
But it was one of his very rambling letters about music.
My father's passion was music, specifically jazz, and he lived to share his
knowledge with others, but he was terrible at doing it. He always
started out OK, but as he warmed to his subject he wanted to include more
and more and more so that you got the total of his knowledge in one session.
When I was a child he gave up on teaching me his knowledge of jazz because I
was so obviously not interested
But the last time we saw him -- my very best time with him,
ever -- he suddenly discovered that his grandchildren shared his love of
jazz. For years, ever since they started becoming teenagers, he
assumed they had nothing in common because he hated rock and roll.
What a surprise it was when they started playing jazz for him and he
positively glowed when he sat down and joined them in a jam session.
"Whoever thought I would have a jam session with my grandchildren" he
said at the time and I felt so good because I realized that I had finally
done something that made hi happy.
He started teaching Jeri about jazz and, as usual, overdid
it. At first she was enjoying it but as it went on and on and on, I
saw that trapped look in her eyes.
This letter, rather than letting me know what I was doing
wrong, started out "will you give this to David, please. I have
already sent it to Ned and to Paul." It was four pages, back to back
about music, chords (my god did he loved chords! I swear an augmented
something could give him an orgasm) and suggestions for how to play and what
musicians to listen to. You could tell that he was frantic as he was
writing it, trying to get it all down, because the handwriting got more and
more illegible as he warmed to his subject, plus the pen he used bled
through to the back, so it was very difficult to read. I don't think I
ever gave the letter to David. Just something else I had done that
would have made my father angry if he ever knew.
It was a roller coaster of emotions as I continued to the
bottom of this box. I saved maybe a dozen letters -- everything from
the kids, everything from Sister Anne and a few others that were special to
me.
I think the favorite thing I found in the box was an
envelope that had this piece of paper in it
When I unfolded it I found this
Why you don't just toss things willy nilly and why you take
two hours to go thrugh everything to make sure it is something you really
want to throw away...
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