Love Letters

The beginning of a journey to forgiveness

I found the letters in the bottom of the old sea chest underneath piles of frayed and pilled sweaters. The bundle was about four inches thick, tied in the same pink and blue satin ribbon I remembered seeing as a child the last time I explored the content of this chest. I used to open it to pull out mum’s double narrow satin wedding shoes. I loved the sound of the heels click-clacking on the wood floors as my sweaty bare feet clung to the grown-up satin. I felt close to my mum wearing her shoes. She died when I was nine. Now the chest belonged to my sister, the shoes long gone, as with most artifacts of my childhood. I was searching again for closeness, identity; but also for a way in to the story of my family.

“Have you read these?” I asked my sister, carrying the frayed stack of letters into the kitchen where she was making fruit salad for her daughter’s birthday party. She looks up from her chopping block and I see a wave of hesitation, a furrowed brow as she ponders my question. None of us enter the past lightly. “No, I haven’t read them. Dad wrote them to Mum while he was away at sea during the war. He courted her through those letters.”

I picked at the satin bow, flattened from the weight of debris and years in seclusion. “I wish we had Mum’s responses,” I said. “Her letters, now that would be interesting.” Anything about Mum was interesting to me. Being the youngest, I did not have the same history with her as my older siblings and I craved a connection with her.

My sister nodded in agreement as she picked up the peels and rinds and discarded them in her compost pile, a bucket in the kitchen sink. She lived in a small bungalow on a pond in Belchertown, Massachusetts. I did not visit her often, it was a long drive from Red Bank New Jersey and with work and young kids, it was nearly impossible.

“Do you want them?” My sister asked. “You should have them.” She is adamant, rubbing her hands dry on the frayed kitchen towel.

I felt an urgency in the weight of the letters in my hands, as if I was meant to find them. The story of our family starts here. Tied in a thin pink and blue satin ribbon, a hint of mold and ghosts permeated the light sepia tinge of envelopes; a tightly woven, hopeful future, constructed of words built on love and longing.