September 6, 2016 - Twenty six years ago - What got me started

I have a confession to make.  I save papers – seriously save papers. There is a word for that: “pack rat”.   That is me.  I have decades of my mother’s letters.  I have every love letter and card my husband has written me.  I feel if someone sends me their thoughts and caring in a letter – I should keep it and savor it in the future.  Well, I did some savoring the other day when I was looking for some of the columns I wrote in college which I haven’t found yet.

          But, I found something better.  I won First Place in the Essay contest at Isothermal Community College and it was printed in The Anuran, 1990.  Then, 26 years later I won on the poem I used as the First Post to this blog.    Just think – 26 years ago – where were you?  I was at the college where one of my fellow Patriot writers scooped me that I had won first place.

At the time I kept a journal and here are a few of the entries the day I found out:

I spent a quarter and phoned my husband – he chuckled – something to the effect of “world famous author’ he teased me.

I ran another hard copy when I got home. OH, I think it got better just sitting on the sectors between the rows on the floppy disc.

I am so excited I can’t even stand myself!

Are you kidding me?  I’m tickled to death.

I’ve phoned every person I know . . .

Some may not see it as much, but competing with others, blindly with no name. That’s what makes it all the more __________[what is that word?]

I called Mom – I could hear her smile through the phone saying, “You couldn’t have done it without me . . . if I hadn’t written those letters . . .”

I want to explode at the seams.

I wonder if anyone realizes that writing letters is an art form?

Enough – thank goodness I have only two pages of excitement – I don’t think I could stand any more – nor could you.

Notice I used a “pay phone” . . . and I mentioned “floppy disc” – both so archaic.  I even had writers block where I actually drew a line and asked exasperated, what is that word.  I still do that.

Below is the essay and I feel it has passed the test of time, hopefully you will think so too.
  

FIRST PUBLISHED

The Anuran, Spring 1990; Literary Magazine of Isothermal Community College

Spindale, North Carolina. Page 62

First Place

A LETTER FROM MOM

Teri St. John

Forest City

          It’s been a tiring day; I trudge to the mailbox.  Amongst the bills and slick advertisements is a simple white envelope – the kind you get at the grocery store sixty-nine cents for a hundred.  Instantly my spirits lift.  A letter from Mom!  Inside the plain wrapper are half a dozen pages that have the ability to transport me hundreds of miles. As I tear open the back flap, the magical essence of love escapes to envelop me, making time stand still.

          I remember my first letter from Mom.  Early one morning I left Logan airport and arrived in Kansas City late that afternoon.  I was moving to the city where my fiancé lived, and the parting at the airport between myself and my parents had left a hollowness that I had dwelled on during my long, lonely flight.  So little had been said.  My parents are not demonstrative, and following a simple embrace I stepped into the plane to start a new life. When I arrived in Kansas City my luggage was lost, but when I got to the motel there was an ordinary white envelope with familiar handwriting waiting for me.  It was a letter from Mom filled with all the right words on paper.  Her voice didn’t crack; no tears stopped her.  It couldn’t have been said that way in person, and she knew it.  That first letter contained the love and encouragement I desperately needed, realizing I was half a country away from home.  It has been a dozen years and many moves since that first letter from Mom, yet Mom’s letters in my mail box never cease to make me lift my chin and smile.  My Mom and I had never been close friends before I moved away; but, our exchange of letters quickly entrenched a rare, mother-daughter friendship.

          Unfolding the letter, I can picture the peach paint in Mom’s kitchen, the many baskets hanging in the archway among the dried herbs, and the gas stove giving off warmth as she puts fine point pen to utility grade paper to bring me all the news. She scrawls her whole life onto pale blue lines just for me.  Her letters read just like she talks – often in riddles and half sentences.  I can hear the lilt in her voice and see her animated brown eyes flashing with optimism. And, when she is sad I can sense it between the lines. Through Mom’s letters I keep abreast of everything in Mom and Dad’s life. I may live hundreds of miles away, but I haven’t missed a single funeral, new baby, engagement, bridal shower, wedding, graduation, or church function since I left home.  Many times I have sent her elegant stationery, and dutifully she’ll send off one letter, save the rest for her other correspondence, and revert back to the grocery store brand tables for my letters.  When she gets to the end of a page and knows she hasn’t enough news for another page, she’ll turn it and write around the edges.  Often she’ll write post scripts in shorthand on the outside back flaps of the envelope.  Only once or twice has my Dad added a note at the bottom in cautious, manly penmanship.

          Mom writes about the changing of seasons and Dad tending his vegetable gardens, raking leaves, stacking wood, or shoveling snow.  She heralds the first crocus, daffodil, and pussy willows of spring.  She tells of the first singing of the peepers, the first rose of summer, and the last chrysanthemum escaping the fall frost.  Her letters make me feel as if I am actually helping with the spring cleaning by taking down the curtains to launder or helping open the windows on a mild winter’s day to air the rooms.  I imagine I can hear the dripping of the melting icicles onto the grainy snow.  In our letters we are together as we haunt the antique shops, browse flea markets and gift shops, interior decorate, clothes shop and accessorize, plant herb and flower gardens, cook, can and claim country fair blue ribbons. There is nothing that can’t be squeezed into the envelope.  Mom’s letters often include photographs, news clippings, fabric swatches, comic strips, recipes, poems, optimistic quotations, coupons, seeds, handmade intertwined paper hearts, or pattern for a Christmas tree-top angel.  In her letters Mom is my theater, food, and restaurant critic. She’s my travel guide, book reviewer, home-town newscaster, and international news analyst.  Her humor shines through with her amusing insights into human nature.  She’ll rant on a soap box or use her letters to lie on a psychologist’s couch.

          Over the years we’ve used our letters to examine pivotal changes in our lives. When Mom tried to reconcile the long ordeal of Grandma dying, I felt as if I was at her side during her visits to the hospital. The scent of disinfectant and the wandering eyes of her dying parent were vividly clear to me.  Between the lines I could easily read that Mom wanted to let her go gracefully but still clutched her tightly.

          Through her letters Mom has become my best friend, mentor, confidant, and ally. She brings me inspiration, courage, and insight. Her letters are tucked everywhere in my house. They are jammed in the kitchen catch-all drawer, stuffed in the telephone address book, slipped into a lingerie drawer, tucked in with the bills and receipts, or mark half-read books.  When I clean, I pause and re-read them to savor their contents, and then I find them a place for safekeeping.

          I fold the pages checking the flow of the magical essence and slip them back into the envelope. I smile to myself, thinking I could move anywhere on earth and never be away from home as long as there was a letter from Mom.

FIRST PUBLISHED

The Anuran, Spring 1990; Literary Magazine of Isothermal Community College

Spindale, North Carolina. Page 62

         I truly hope the above inspires you to write that letter of love or encouragement you have been meaning to so that someone someday will have kept it in their “pack rat” collection and take it out every so often, and “open the back flap and let the magical essence of love escape over them.”