Before Handwriting Becomes Obsolete

I’m wrestling with a different post that refuses to come together, no matter how hard I type and re-type. You might be surprised at how much not-writing happens in my writing process — I frequently am. In hopes of trying to jumpstart that piece, I started digging around in the Archives. The Archives is my mother’s 1940s-era suitcase where the sentimental stuff lives. Tessa’s newborn-size Christmas dress is in there, along with my son’s favorite stuffed turtle and the heart pendant that my first boyfriend gave me for Valentine’s Day in 7th grade. I rediscovered Dad’s WWII dog tags next to a photo button of my mother from the early 1930s. But the best stuff is in here.

Once while snooping around the farmhouse, I discovered a cigar box in the top drawer of my parents’ dresser. It held a collection of cards and letters that my outwardly pragmatic father had saved, most from his children. Over the years, I kept track of that box, even when I had to snoop for it in a new location after we moved to Arizona. Eventually, the one-box collection expanded to two. He kept all the cards the boys sent him, along with a Father’s Day card I made in kindergarten that looked like a construction paper shirt and tie. He also saved a note from his best friend, who called him a shithead for standing up the guests at his own birthday party, and a letter from my brother Dan taking him to task on another matter. He cared about all of it, it seemed, even the unpleasant parts. So from my father, I learned the sappy habit of keeping cards and letters.

Most of the things I’ve saved are from my late teens and twenties. If you and I knew each other in the 1980s, something you sent me is probably in this pile. There are letters from my brothers, written when I was a teenager and they’d already made the great escape into the adult world, offering encouragement, warnings, and even money if I needed to get away from home for awhile. (An offer of cash is a rare and startling event in the Yauger family, so that’s probably why that note made it into the Archives.) My mother wrote me letters when I went on religious retreats, and my grandmother wrote to me because we were 3,000 miles apart for nearly twenty years.

In high school, my best friend and I used to write to each other every day during class when we should have been doing something, you know, academic. We’d pass each other the notes in the hallway and still have plenty to talk about in the car on the way home and on the phone that night. When we were juniors, she joined Amigos de las Americas and spent the next two summers teaching dental hygiene in a village in Honduras. I saved a lot of those letters too, especially from the summer after we graduated because I knew things would never be the same again.

The great thing about this pile of paper is how much more it means now than when I saved it. My Aunt Anne, who died forty years ago, signed my autograph book and I tore out that page to keep. It’s the only piece of her handwriting I have. Aunt Tess sent a get-well card when I was hospitalized during sophomore year of college. It has a cute cartoon kitty on the front, holding an umbrella to keep off the rain, and the printed sentiment offers get-well wishes. Inside she wrote,

Dear Michelle,

What kind of a stunt is this at the end of the school year? A tough way to get out of exams…

Aunt Tess had been a nurse, and this was her brand of sympathy.

I kept all the letters from the first boy who ever loved me back, along with another pile my friend Brett wrote from his drug treatment program in New Mexico, a few years before he died in a motorcycle accident. I have 30-year-old letters from Elaine, notes from David, and cards from Shari and Celene, all made sweeter by the fact that these people are still part of my life, even if from a distance.

When he was 7 years old, Sam handmade seven Mother’s Day cards for me. I also have an apology he wrote on another occasion, folded into a paper airplane, and launched from his bedroom doorway since he was in exile there at the time. And in 1999, Tessa wrote this note for no reason at all.

Dear Mama,

I love you very mach. I well love you for the rast of you’re life.

Love, Tessa

Gosh, let’s hope so. By the way, her spelling has improved considerably since then.

Handwriting has gone out of vogue, much to our collective detriment. We email and text and, uh, blog. But we don’t pour out our thoughts on paper with a pen, risking the possibility of phrasing something imperfectly or writing our sentences a little less than straight across the page. Most of the mail comes in window envelopes now and none of that is worth keeping for posterity. I wonder what our kids will do when they want to remember parts of their lives that have passed into history — check their saved text messages?

So as I look through this pile of love I’ve saved over the years, I’ve decided to share some of it with you. You may never have known my grandmother or my mom, but their letters  say more than I ever could about what kind of women they were. It may be cheating, since it’s not my own writing, but this is my blog so I can do what I want here.

Here’s a quick one, a note between my dad and me written during my freshman year of high school. We hadn’t been speaking much for about six months, and even when I brought home a report card packed with A’s, he made no comment as usual. So I left the report card on his desk with this question written in pencil. His response is in pen on the right side of the paper, and it was the only time he ever said he was proud of me. I doubt if it would’ve had the same impact in an email.