A few days ago I was burning up about 10 years worth of personal papers that should have been shredded, but no shredder. I began to remember reading my mother and father's love letters.
Mom would visit her maternal grandmother in Des Moines. She lived on Park Avenue next door to my dad. They would write letters when she went back home to Marshalltown.
I started reading those letters when I was a preschooler. They were mostly poems and statements like "Dee Dee Girl" and "Johnny Boy" and a lot about Whipper Wills. Listening to the night birds I guess.
I was horrified when I was about 15 years old and mom said she had burned all the old letters
she and dad had written each other.
I guess history repeats itself because one time many years ago I burned all our letters. Glen and I had been writing to each other since the fifties and a letter every day when he was in the army. Glen wrote lots of poems to me and our letters were filled with loneliness and sadness at being apart. In later letters I was expecting our first child.
I am so sorry now. Glen left me this time without a word of hope or good bye. I wish I had all those old letters now. I would probably make a book out of them. It would be comforting to read them again.
I think rmom still has letters my grandmother and grandfather wrote to one another. She still has some letters her and I wrote back and forth when I lived in Texas as a young mother. I can't remember what I did with the light bill. Go figure - must have taken after my dad!!!
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