Journal in a Box

I left my hometown in 1976 when Bob joined the Army and we moved to Texas. Three doors down from us in Toledo lived a family who had become part of our lives – Becky was my “backdoor friend”. We visited each other daily, a knock and a ”Becky!” or “Pam!” called through the screen, and then sometimes hours sitting at one another’s kitchen tables talking over kids and work and neighborhood gossip.

Becky’s daughters, Maggie, Pam and Karin, though older than Gayle, were an important part of her early childhood. Gayle, Pam and Karin played together daily, along with other neighborhood kids. It was Pam who convinced Gayle to give her brand new Pooh Bear a bath in the wading pool in our backyard, and Maggie who occasionally tended her when I had somewhere to go. Maggie also taught 4-year-old Gayle to ride a bike. When it was obvious I was going to be leaving the neighborhood and my home, it was almost as painful to leave Becky and other close friends as it was to leave my family.

There were hugs and sadness when Gayle and I left on that chilly November morning, and Becky and I promised to write one another. At some point we even had promised to save one another’s letters so that when we got old and gray, we would trade back our letters, and thereby would each have a record of what had transpired in our lives – a journal, of sorts, in a box.

This morning I opened my cedar chest of treasures and found a box of letters that isn’t with the other many boxes of letters stacked on a shelf in the basement. I pulled out one from Dad, advice that I had asked for and received many years ago. I found one from Mom, more solicited advice, and gentle encouragement to weather the storms of early marriage. I found a “Member Request Form” sent to me by the Church in the 1980’s when a friend had lost track of me and requested the Church’s help. We did finally catch up with each other, a continent apart. I found a letter from Sister Mary Coletta, a Catholic nun who had become a dear friend to Bob and me when we took children on weekend outings from St. Anthony Villa when we yearned for children, but didn’t have any in the early days of our marriage. And there were, of course, many letters from Becky. I pulled one out and read it, and memories flooded me. We’re still friends, though we have converted to writing emails, not so often, hurried catch-ups written in just a few minutes rather than the sometimes many-day epistles of the old days.

This is the day of email, and so few handwritten letters between friends and family members. Emails are often just forwarded messages of friendship, warning, or humor. When they are personal messages of substance, they often become victims of the “Delete” button. The typed page lacks the warmth and charm of flowered stationery and personal handwriting. Still, I save them, print them and keep them, someone else’s “journal in a box”.