My grandmother was a collector of things—of porcelain figurines and china, of romance books and Life magazines, of afghans and brocade pillows, stools and side tables, costume jewelry and shoes.
After my grandfather passed away, my grandmother’s worsening dementia soon got to the point that my mother and her brother and five sisters had to make the decision to move her into a nursing home. They faced the daunting task of going through her many things.
Tucked away in a shoebox in her dresser they found a stack of letters bound with a gold stretchy band, the kind used to hold the stems of roses together in a bouquet. Most were letters from her children who had moved off for college and marriage. There were Mother’s Day cards and birthday cards from various fond family and friends.
And love letters from my grandfather.
Sweet, simple love letters from their courtship days, before the war and the depression, when he returned from college to work the family business and take care of ailing parents and a widowed sister and her children. Before seven children of their own. Before heart attacks and arthritis. And before all the dreams he wrote about in those letters were put on hold while they lived with the hand that the times had dealt them.
Every now and then my mom would pay me a few dollars to clean her and dad’s room. Wipe down the bedroom furniture with polish, make the bed, organize the things on top of her dresser and put away her clothes. It was how I discovered my mom’s personal mementos in her top dresser drawer. Necklaces, brooches, a ladies nail grooming kit and letters bound with a simple rubber band. There were letters from her parents—words of encouragement in facing her own hard times. Letters from my sister, off at private school and then college. Mother’s Day and birthday cards, some homemade, some with personal notes from her sisters or daughters.
But no love letters.
None of Mom’s personal, private things included a history of a relationship between a woman and her loving, and loved, husband. No love letters from the years they dated, no Valentine’s Day cards with personal notes from their early years of marriage, no senior ring on a silver chain necklace, or pressed flowers, or promise rings. And no photos. Not in the top dresser drawer, or in the family photo albums. There were the photos of children and family events from both sides of the family. But no star-crossed teenagers, no black-and-whites of him with his arm casually around her waist and her fingers tucked into his back jeans pocket. None even of husband and wife at any time throughout the years of their marriage—at babies’ births or birthday parties, in the kitchen getting ready for Thanksgiving company, or under the mistletoe at Christmas.
There was never a particular moment of revelation that something very important was missing in the story of my parents’ lives. I think it was more of a growing awareness that these two people who were my mother and father had never been more than that, that they weren’t anything to each other that included emotion and desire, comfort and understanding. I look back now and realize they spent their time together as awkward strangers, co-workers in the “family” business, with no relationship outside their job of raising a family and making ends meet. No love letters.
At this point in my own life and marriage, I’m starting to wonder what my own children will think about their mom and dad as awareness of such things grows. What memories will they have of us as husband and wife, of us as something more than their parents? When they find my collection of personal memories, will there be any love letters other than the handful from our pre-marriage days? When they find our marriage memory book with only the first two years filled in? The one photo of us on our wedding day, will that be enough?
