I don’t really know where to begin with this one.
No, seriously; I really don’t. For some reason, when I write in this style – first-person, memoir-esque – it just comes out in funny / self-deprecating / perhaps thoughtful. But when it comes to the sad, the painful…that voice just seems to show itself out. Maybe because the worst things I’ve felt in the course of my life – namely, whatever I couldn’t really turn into something funny - were the very things I kept to myself. But the irony is, when I talk now to friends and I tell them about “this shit thing” or “that shit thing”, they always say: gurl, you need to be writing about that.
So tonight, with the vestiges of tears still clinging to my eyes and cheeks, I’m going to try.
Oh – and I’m also playing Fade Into You (Mazzy Starr, ovbz) to, ya know – keep me in the mood.
Honestly, I don’t even know why I got as upset as I did. It had all started off fun; hilarious, even. My parents had dropped off a bunch of old board games at my house earlier, and unbeknownst to me, they had also thrown in a large envelope filled with papers. I chuckled to myself, thinking, classic Mom. Always trying to sneak in things like that - drawings we had done as kids, old tests or notebooks from school. She likely just wants them out of the house, sure, but – also, she feels in her heart we (my siblings and I) would want them. Or at least, appreciate them.
So, I open the envelope and begin to curiously empty its contents, wondering what it’ll be this time. It starts off slightly confusing – why would Mom be giving me all the thank-you cards that I (ever, by the looks of it) wrote to my grandparents? But before I could puzzle the strangeness of getting back thank-you cards I had written so many years ago, there came some detours – such as, the synagogue program from the weekend of my bat mitzvah. A playbill from the drama show of my junior year, which featured a play written and directed by me (god, that day was one of the most fun in all four years of high school). The startlingly feminist poem I wrote in 8th grade (I apparently had some views at 13), which I read aloud to my boyfriend despite his pleading for me not to. I can’t imagine why he didn’t want to hear it: to give you an idea, one of my favorite parts compared the female gender to the queen in chess – the most powerful piece on the board, and the male gender to the king – slow, oafish, helpless, taking forever to move, and only able to do so one step at a time.
I laughed so loud I scared one of our cats out of the room.
And then, there came more and more thank-you cards. One after another, from the more sophisticated college ones, to high school. The ones from junior high where I was definitely still deciding what I wanted my handwriting to look like, to clumsily hand-drawn filled sheets from when I was 4 or 5. All of them from me, to my grandparents. And then - and I don’t why then, in that moment - it hit me.
My grandparents had kept these. They must have. For all these years.
It was such a powerful thing, and I didn’t even realize. All those years of “just cards” that I wrote or made or drew, even emails from college that my grandpa had printed out to keep, that didn’t mean little to me per se, but…that I certainly couldn’t have imagined had meant so much to my grandparents. Enough, in fact, that at age 91, this is the first time my grandma has chosen to part with them. And while I do always say apartment cleansing is cathartic as fuck – this time, my grandma's came with a slight casualty.
As I sat there sobbing, surrounded by decades of thank-you cards, it wasn’t a sea of memories in the way I normally experience it - though I do distinctly remember writing many of them. It was a wave, of life, of the past, of understanding my grandparents and what they cherished more than I ever had before.
Yet, I still didn’t know why I was so upset. I cried and cried for, oh god, 20 minutes straight? But why? It was a feeling, an overwhelming one, of memories and nostalgia, of yearning and heartbreak, but not that, and so much more than that. I tried to explain it to my boyfriend, failing again and again. After talking for some time, which involved many tears over my (recently deceased) grandpa, he said to call my mom, talk to her about this. “If this is about your grandparents, she’ll understand,” he said, “It’ll be good to talk to her about that – you’re both going through the same emotions.” I sullenly stared at him, then the floor. “I wouldn’t even know what to say, I don’t know even know why I’m feeling like this.” Hugging me, he said, “Call her.”
So, I did. And I resorted to what I’ve always resorted to with writing – shameless honesty. Okay so, I don’t know what to say? Then, that is exactly what I say – “Hi mom, I don’t know why I’m so upset, but…”
It turned out to be the best thing I could have done. My mom, as always, was amazing, and knew all the things I needed to hear to feel better - classic Mom. “We were a family who wrote letters,” she said, “And in the world we live in now, of texts and emails…there’s no sentimental value in that. And sentimental value, is a powerful thing. That’s why I wanted you to have those cards.”
Which is true. We were a letter-writing family. As a kid, I had boxes filled with cards written to me, and my mom confessed tonight she may have a near-closet filled with correspondence she’s received. That she’ll never throw them away, for the same reason those letters left me sobbing – the sentimental value in them is immeasurable, and more powerful than I certainly could have ever imagined.
No, I don’t think everyone needs to go out and write letters, or panic over all the ones they may have discarded over the years (whoops). But maybe to simply remember, in the vapid and often lonely world we live in, there’s still room for a box – or two – of reminders of what really matters.
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