Letters In A Box

 

“What are you hoping to get out of them?” my wife asked. To which I’d reply, “If you’re parents abandoned you, abused you, or sent you to boarding school in Siberia there’s always a ‘Why.’”

I’m reading through some letters in a box. They were with my mom’s things, fifteen years ago when we cleaned out her house. A shoe box I put in storage. Forgot I had them until the unit was unloaded. Letters from my dad to my mom. Letters dad wrote to my mom from before my birth until I was seven, my sister five. A one-way conversation.

There are relationships where one partner’s vibrant character, and purposeful lifestyle pulls the other clod out of catastrophe and into a smooth orbit. Not our story. My parents were arcing toward collision. To avoid it my parents lived separate lives, three-thousand miles apart.

The iconic Civil-war letter goes something like, “I would brave hot musket shot and cannon-ball fire to experience your red-hot loving again.” Those were not my dad’s letters. Writing from New Jersey to my mother in the San Fernando Valley the letters contained four basic sentences, incorporated four themes: the weather, repentance, money, and plea.

Two pages, handwritten; “It is March, and I am still sleeping in my long underwear.” “Sorry I missed you when I called last night. The boys and I went out. They bought a round. I bought a round…” “Did you receive the money from Rochester? They owe me about 140 dollars.” Often, there was a question about bringing us to visit or to live in the east. Neither ever happened.

The explosion came in high school. Legal divorce. My sister and I were not surprised. The letters survived, in a box. In a closet. Devoid of answers.

Photo by Ire Photocreative on Unsplash

Morning Ritual

On working days and vacation days—one morning ritual. The face gets washed; hot water or cold water; soak the hair, brush it out. Small life-affirming ritual I’ve been engaging in for longer than I’ve been drinking coffee. More consistent than brushing my teeth.

Twenty bucks would buy me a new one! It’s a dark black, solid plastic piece that my dad probably bought from a local drug store. Or the Fuller brush man. I haven’t been parted from it—so to speak. Constant for forty-two years. It wasn’t mine. It was dad’s and it worked pretty good for what I needed. My sixteen years-old long hair needed training and dad’s brush was perfect. When he left the house, he left it behind. Must not have been important. Now I think maybe he knew? How do we lock onto these little things?  

In high school and college I carried a comb in my pocket. Always the brush in the morning. Combs disappeared but the brush traveled with me.  My mom’s pink bathroom to a summer in Chicago; the upstairs bathroom in a house full of guys to the strained and cluttered baths of my first marriage. High desert years alone with my daughter to beach side songs with my beloved. The brush has been along for all of it. In suitcases and toiletry bags; on hotel counters to permanent bathroom drawers. Recently I bought another brush for travel—so nothing happens to the good one.

Why this brush?  Does it feel perfect in hand and on hair (weight, smooth plastic, firm bristles that penetrate to scalp) because it is; or because I’ve used it so long. Is it that ‘one thing’ of my dad’s that I own? I don’t know all the answers.

I do know this. Tomorrow morning the sun will rise.  I’ll get out of bed. Pour a cup of coffee. The face will get washed. I’ll put my head under running water. Then I’ll brush it out with the ideal hair brush. Life goes on.