Letter Purge: Keep & Burn
Trying to make our basement a sports basement. Eventually, a climbling wall, basketball hoop, ballet barre. That is the goal. Right now, it just looks like Serbia.
We have all of our correspondence in three plastic bins. ALL of our correspondence. Geoff to me in college. Me to Geoff in college. Geoff to me in Denmark. My parents to me since college. My sister's to me in college. Joyce's to me from fourth grade through college. And various and miscellaneous. Then there are the other correspondence: Grands to us. Grands to our kids. And then the Christmas cards! Do people just throw these away? Some, yes, I can toss. But some, some are great photos, some are crafted-family newsletters that are funny and sweet.
Then there is the weird in-between category that my posthumous editors will call "The Slutty Period" and these are letters that when I asked Geoff if I should keep them caused him to ask, "Whose story are we trying to tell by keeping these letters?" They are letters and ephemera from boyfriends. I married my high school sweet-heart. Everyone knows that. But I want to keep these letters to signify the short run I had in the dating world. Clara and Calliope will read them and laugh and see that they have a choice to end up with fellas who do tight-handed drawings of themselves with various guitars OR they can choose men like Geoff. They can choose guys who name their members or they can choose men like Geoff. They can choose partners who torment them with philosophical debate OR they can choose men like Geoff. Of course, I will tell them. But these letters are proof. I think that adolescents are big on proof.
A friend said that when they moved, she did a ceremonial fire to burn a lot of letters and journals she wanted to put behind her. So we tried that with some stuff last night. We put some stacks of old letters and notebooks in the fireplace and stoked it. It was kind of beautiful, the paper turning white to yellow, to deep red, then to gray ash in these detrital layers of thin film. When you blew at them, they turned to powder. The fire was so smoky, we threw open the windows. And what was worse was that where the kids sleep on the third floor, it was smokiest of all. What if there's symbolism in that? Whoa.
Anyway, FYI, I think I have kept a pretty representative sampling of the best letters. And no, I'm sorry you can't read them.
We have all of our correspondence in three plastic bins. ALL of our correspondence. Geoff to me in college. Me to Geoff in college. Geoff to me in Denmark. My parents to me since college. My sister's to me in college. Joyce's to me from fourth grade through college. And various and miscellaneous. Then there are the other correspondence: Grands to us. Grands to our kids. And then the Christmas cards! Do people just throw these away? Some, yes, I can toss. But some, some are great photos, some are crafted-family newsletters that are funny and sweet.
Then there is the weird in-between category that my posthumous editors will call "The Slutty Period" and these are letters that when I asked Geoff if I should keep them caused him to ask, "Whose story are we trying to tell by keeping these letters?" They are letters and ephemera from boyfriends. I married my high school sweet-heart. Everyone knows that. But I want to keep these letters to signify the short run I had in the dating world. Clara and Calliope will read them and laugh and see that they have a choice to end up with fellas who do tight-handed drawings of themselves with various guitars OR they can choose men like Geoff. They can choose guys who name their members or they can choose men like Geoff. They can choose partners who torment them with philosophical debate OR they can choose men like Geoff. Of course, I will tell them. But these letters are proof. I think that adolescents are big on proof.
A friend said that when they moved, she did a ceremonial fire to burn a lot of letters and journals she wanted to put behind her. So we tried that with some stuff last night. We put some stacks of old letters and notebooks in the fireplace and stoked it. It was kind of beautiful, the paper turning white to yellow, to deep red, then to gray ash in these detrital layers of thin film. When you blew at them, they turned to powder. The fire was so smoky, we threw open the windows. And what was worse was that where the kids sleep on the third floor, it was smokiest of all. What if there's symbolism in that? Whoa.
Anyway, FYI, I think I have kept a pretty representative sampling of the best letters. And no, I'm sorry you can't read them.
posted by Maria at
9:05 PM
3 Comments:
Love letters and cards between me and Joe I have. Handmade cards from the kids, yes. Christmas cards-thrown out when the decor is taken down. Yesterday I threw out all the cards Joe got at his retirement party. Larry needed the binder they were in for a school project! It's so funny how different we are in this way. Sometimes the girls will have something old and nostalgic that they got from you. Or you'll be wearing an old dress of your mom's. That's when I wish I had your gift for holding on to stuff, but I just can't do it! About the smoke: I was listening to a talk with examples from Dante's story about the mountain and virtues and vices. Smoke symbolized something...can't remember what...I'll let you know when I think of it. Lastly, the basement room sounds cool and I love reading your blog. xoxo.
Ja zameriti taj!
Unfortunately, I don't speak the ancestral language belonging to any of your paramours but I DO have a collection of letters from girls angling their way into your radar. What should I do with those?
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