A friend from graduate school has been scouring
top to bottom her gorgeous antebellum South Carolina home in preparation for
putting it on the market. She and
her husband have gone a little OCD about the endeavor, she says, and this
morning she’s sent me a note warning of the dangers of overdoing it.
Many years have passed since she and I could share
leisurely lunches at one another’s kitchen tables. Anyone who spends time with me these days knows there’s very
little risk I will “overdo it” when it comes to housecleaning. Myopia has its benefits.
But I am on a mission to de-clutter. The
basement is so empty it echoes (full disclosure: I hired men to help with
this). And while the loft over the
garage remains a terrifying maze of boxes and abused furniture, I am chipping
away at closets, going through the large plastic tubs into which much of the
detritus of our modern life has fallen.
The strategy of tossing junk into
stackable containers has worked for the last six years or so, but eventually,
one must sort and purge. Less
mucking out than patient mining, the task can yield its unexpected nuggets of
gold.
A folder of papers I’d inherited from my
Aunt Ginny turned up in one of those plastic tubs stowed in a spare bedroom
closet, along with a potpourri of notebooks, papers, and out of focus drugstore
reprints one of my daughters left behind after heading to college. Inside the folder I found my paternal grandfather’s
will and an accounting of his estate; a substantial, glossy photocopy of my
father’s discharge papers; and a number of formal portraits.
There’s one of my father at age ten or
eleven, and several of my aunt as a young woman: smiling broadly after her
graduation from nursing school, and lining up against the façade of a stately
brick building with three dozen other students all in white. In another, she’s clearly served as a
maid of honor; post-ceremony, she stands beside her good friend, who wears
cat-eye glasses and holds a cigarette in her free hand.
And then, there was an envelope:
unaddressed, three inches by seven. Inside, an invitation to my grandparents’
wedding, a tiny card announcing my aunt’s birth, several miniscule newspaper
clippings, and what is perhaps the last letter my grandmother, Elsie Buel, ever
received, written by her mother, Ada Louise Tyre.
Monday Eve
8
30
My dear Elsie,
Just a few lines, to
tell you we arrived home all OK at 7 pm.
Had a cup of tea at Alma’s, all the rest had ice cream, but me. I did
not want any. Mrs. S staid all
night with me. She was delighted with her trip or I should say visit; she
thinks you are a wonderful hostess and housekeeper, I agree with her.
You surely did it all up fine. Everybody was fine, and your dinner was fine! I
thank you for all your kindness to us all.
I will think of the
nice time when I am alone here in the eve. My thoughts will all be happy of all my visits with you all.
I have been busy all day, went down town . . .in the morning then had a lot of work when I came home.
My coat came at noon but I have packed it up to send back. We don’t like it,
and they did not put the buttons and loops on. I don’t know where I will get one now. Maybe I will go to
Asbury later on, after Mrs. S gets there. This pen will hardly write so guess I
will have to hurry along. Well. Willetts forgot the bag with the bread so Alma
had to stop in one place and get some rolls.
Now I hope John’s
cold is better, and that you were none the worse for your work. We all think
the kiddies were fine, and I was very proud of you all. Ada V. was a real
little lady, and John too was very good. We talked about it going home in the
car. Now I must send a few lines
to Mame and Fanny but not tonight. I am too sleepy, take care don’t get any more cold, dress
warm, the children too. I will send those things later.
Now will say
good night
lots of love to all,
again thanking you
lovingly
Mother
Excuse this scribbling
A two-cent stamp sent the letter -- posted
Tuesday, October 28, 1930 -- on its way to my grandparent’s home in Wilmington,
Delaware, from Toms River, New Jersey. Ada V. was my Aunt Ginny, and John is my
father. Alma was Elise’s sister; the forgetful Willets was Alma’s husband, and
Fanny and Mame were stepsisters.
Those undisclosed items promised to follow
might have arrived, but were almost certainly not enjoyed or put to use. Elsie’s brief obituary, a mere 128 words,
preserved on one of the yellowed clippings, says she died November 8th
of a brain abscess, “which developed from an abscess of the ear, which started
last Sunday.” She was 42 years old.
Elsie with Ada Virginia
Two more clippings were also enclosed in
the delicate envelope. In one, a tiny inch of newsprint, a single line
describes a bridal luncheon given by her future mother-in-law. In another only
slightly larger, a concise report documents the couple’s “quiet wedding” on a
Wednesday afternoon in April 1913 at Elsie’s parent’s home. The unattended bride wore a travelling
suit of steel-colored French poplin with a matching hat, and carried white
roses. Following an informal
reception where Elsie received “a large number of beautiful gifts,” the
newlyweds honeymooned in Atlantic City.
Time has left this little trove too
fragile to handle repeatedly. The
clippings are dry and crumbling as the wings of desiccated insects, and in just
a few hours of examination, I’ve aggravated the envelope’s fraying fold. I’m
grateful that in my zeal to clean, these misplaced treasures -- the wedding
invitation from a century ago, the notices of what constitutes the public
moments of our private lives, and that poignant letter – were not lost.
I knew of Elsie and her early death, of
course, and have wondered what effect that might have had on my father, who was
only six at her passing. As with all of our beloveds gone too soon, something
of a mythology spins about and shapes the sorrow. I do know that the woman who
eventually replaced her in the household lacked much of anything resembling
human warmth. As a teenager, I found a photo of Elise seated in a wicker chair,
and drew her portrait in pencil.
Faded now, the eyes remain impossibly large and dark, her wrist slender
as a child’s, as I captured without comprehending a perfected image of what was
lost.
Of all the newly recovered items, it is
the letter that stays with me most. I suppose my grandfather kept it and the
envelope’s other contents safe among his personal papers. I find myself imagining what it might have
meant to Elsie to receive such loving and appreciative thanks. Maybe too she
needed the reassurance her mother gave her that indeed everything “was fine.”
As in the case of that simple sketch I
crafted as a kid, whatever we read – novel, text, the unending stream of e-mail
– we interpret in the context of our own pain and joy. It’s not possible for me
to read that final letter without thinking about the last conversation with my
own mother. She had become ill seven years ago this autumn. Usually, I’d see
her during the day, but one evening, something told me to just run over.
I’d brought with me an album of photos of
the kids, and I sat beside her hospital bed as we looked through it together. It was an exceptional evening, a few
days before Christmas; after long weeks of suffering, she appeared free of both
pain and care. Her smile was as
bright and the smooth oval of her face as lovely as I’d ever known them to be.
Though I had the privilege of being with her when she passed the next morning,
it was the short hour we spent the evening before I hold most dear, when
everything seemed, for want of a better word, fine.
I too will think of the nice time, as did
Elsie’s mother, when I am alone here in the eve.
This column appears in the October 2013 issue of award-winning The North Star Monthly. Visit their site: THE NORTH STAR MONTHLY
