Posts Tagged ‘saved letters’
Fun Moments
A few highlights from this weekend at the lake with Cyndie and her mom:
- Cyndie surprised us with some letters she recently uncovered in our archives at home while she was looking for something else. There were almost a dozen, still in their stamped envelopes, written to her by her family while Cyndie was going to school in Spain back in 1977. The amount of detail that Marie (unsurprisingly) wrote gave us a fascinating window into that time of our past. Cyndie had grand plans to have a friend join her after the school session ended to travel around Europe, but had to scrap that adventure when she became dangerously ill and had to return home. Apparently it was wicked cold in the Twin Cities that winter, and the high school hockey team Steve played with was having a winning season. Those subjects were among several that received repeated mentions.
- I spent a chunk of time working on a website for my high school class that we will use in promoting our 50th reunion next summer. Using text messaging to communicate ideas and get feedback from my sub-committee back in the Twin Cities, I was able to make good progress on customizing a pre-formatted site from a service into something more aligned with our sensibilities. You know, changing corny into cool. My classmates deserve something that better reflects who we were back in the 1970s, when “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H” were on television. That was back when our generation figured we were going to change the… Never mind.
- Yesterday afternoon, when I found myself getting nowhere in a struggle to outsmart the site’s formatting, I phoned my software-savvy son, Julian, for advice. We linked up so he could see my screen, allowing him to guide my explorations as we unraveled how the available features could be coped with to achieve my goals. It seemed promising when he discovered I could open a view of the source code. Using his code-writing skills, he would text me a block of code to insert into my draft. It is such a thrill when progress is made. I laughed out loud over the fact that we were pulling off our successes with him at home in the Cities, and me on a laptop in the sunroom at the lake. Alas, in the end, I had to settle for a compromise from my ideal when it became obvious that the host software was overriding our customizations at a certain point.
Now that I think on it, this isn’t much different than the battles I wage against the regular “upgrades” to my WordPress platform that are intended to make it easier to use but often end up preventing me from executing the preferred formatting I’ve been using for years. It’s tough being a dinosaur in today’s world.
[insert Tyrannosaurus rex roar here]
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Fan Mail
It is with great tenacity that Cyndie has undertaken a deep purge of items we have been holding onto for many years. In her case, for more than the years of her life. In addition to things she has from her own lifetime, she has recently processed collections of items and documents from her deceased father and aunt.
Frequently, a question arises about the monetary value of old items. Looking through dozens of old, old books, she found one with a comparable detail that is listed for over $1000.00 in an online rare book site.
The other night, Cyndie opened a box of things she saved that held letters I wrote when we were dating, including when we were contemplating marriage. She saved a great letter I had written when she was away at college. I had found some paper with the classic alternating solid and dashed lines for learning to write the letters of the alphabet. Using a crayon, I precisely shaped each individual letter to write out, “Dear Cyndie, How are you? I am fine.”
In my best infantile handwriting using the crayon, I wrote her name and address on the envelope in too-large, slanting lines.
One of my best efforts.
She found practically ALL of her k-12 report cards. Pretty good grades, but a first-grade teacher lamented that Cyndie falls asleep a lot. Cyndie remembers they were told to put their heads down on their desks after misbehaving and she fell asleep. The rest of the class got up for recess and she missed out, having slept right through it. (For the record, as an adult, Cyndie did a sleep study test and was diagnosed with an uncommon sleep disorder “idiopathic hypersomnolence.”)
The most fun find was mail she had received from TV stars she adored.
The Monkees photo was autographed! I told her it was probably worth money. She looked it up and found the exact image on eBay for $16-17.00. Maybe she should save it a little longer.
If you don’t recognize the black and white headshot, think, “Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!”
That’s Bill Mumy from “Lost in Space.” Cyndie saved the letter and it is such a hoot, I scanned it to share.
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I suggested Cyndie find a current address for him and cut off the bottom portion, fill it out and add the dollar-fifty to give him a laugh of his own.
Finding all this stuff has been entertaining, but keeping it any longer is hard to justify, especially while Cyndie is in the mood to part with it. It has me thinking about people who lose everything in an unexpected fire and suffer such emotional loss of a life’s worth of saved memorabilia. Here we are, voluntarily choosing to purge saved treasures.
Here’s to living in the moment.
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Relative Something 