This is the story of a box. And it's a story of true love that, unlike most such stories, doesn't end with a wedding but starts with one. These are my grandparents, Beverly and Mike, on their wedding day, October 20, 1956. On each side are my great-grandparents: to the left, Gram's parents, Margaret and Walt (he in the white jacket and she in the white hat, both with wide smiles), and to the right, Grandpa's parents, Ethel and Edmund (she so elegantly holding her gloves and he with a classic suit and just the faintest of smirks). My grandparents were married in Gram's hometown, Tacoma, Washington, then Gram moved more than halfway across the country to start her married life in Plymouth, Indiana.
I know, I promised you a box, and a box you shall have. One day last year, nearly 60 years after that wedding, my aunt Janis was looking for something in one of the (many) closets at Grandpa's house, when she found a box. And she thought, as anyone would,
I wonder what's in that box? So she opened it, and she found treasure. Starting in 1956, Gram faithfully wrote long letters to her parents back in Washington, updating them on her life, planning visits back and forth, thanking them for their love and generosity. Eventually, as my mom and her siblings came along, they started writing letters to their grandparents too. And when Bethany and I entered the picture, we wrote too. And it turns out that Grandma Margaret and Grandpa Walt kept those letters. Grandpa Walt died in 1986, and Grandma Margaret died in 1988, and after that, Gram's sister, Aunt Marlene, cleaned out their house and boxed up the letters, and (as best as Grandpa can figure) dropped them off in Plymouth somewhere along her travels. There were still plenty of kids living at my grandparents' house in the late 1980s, so life was busy, and I guess the box got put on a shelf, and there it sat for a couple decades until Janis found it.
So Janis took the box, and she photocopied all of Gram's letters and put them in a (huge) binder in chronological order. She's been reading through them gradually (they are a little hard to read, at least a lot at a time, as you'll see) and highlighting the funny or particularly interesting parts. The rest of the letters (mine and Bethany's and my mom's and my aunts' and uncles' and even Grandpa's) she sorted into envelopes, unread, and returned them to their senders.
I got to read through a lot of Gram's letters over the past couple of days (up to the early 1980s). They are a catalog of everyday life, with updates on who got what sickness (I read a whole page about Laura's bout with chickenpox!), who wore which outfits, how she felt after each of her 12 kids was born, house hunting for a place big enough for everyone, drinks with friends, parties with family (my other great-grandparents, her in-laws, went from "Mr. Jeffirs" and "Mrs. Jeffirs" to "Mother Jeffirs" and "Dad Jeffirs" to "Mother" and "Dad" over the course of 20 or so years). There was a lengthy story about how Gram and Grandpa were playing cards with Aunt Rita (Grandpa's sister) and the cats were howling, so Grandpa took them for a ride to the pond behind his car dealership ("so kind = food and water for them"), but then the next day my mom's cat, Tiger, followed Grandpa around at work all day, still howling and screeching, "so he had to take it for a longer ride." Then they felt bad about the cat, so they bought my mom a guilt parakeet. (Grandpa: "That one didn't last long either, as I recall.") There were letters written in the margins of a child's drawing and letters written underneath somebody's math problems. "I'm going to have to buy a safe to keep my tablets in!" she wrote at one point.
Most of the letters are fairly mundane. Gram was never one to complain or to talk much about her emotions. But even so, in their entirety they make up the most compelling love story I have ever read. Her love for her parents, her husband, her children, her grandchildren
— it's right there in every word, every detail.
Gram died in 2009, but as I read her letters, I could hear her voice in my head, and it was like being granted a wish I would never have even thought to request.
Of course, I know you're really all dying to know what she wrote about me. Well, wait no longer, friends, some images are attached below. I'll even transcribe them for you. But do me a favor, mmmmkay? Read them, then read them again but substitute "Henry" for "Holli." You've heard the classic mother's wish, right?
I hope you have a child who is just like you.
Circa 1976/1977: We had our usual hamburger fry tonight. Mother and Marlene and Bill, Holli and Bethany were over. Bethany is cutting teeth and a little fussy, but still is good as gold most of the time. Holli is such a devil, but so cute. She can say anything and does.
Circa 1979: Holli is registered for kindergarten at St. Mike's. We're not sure they are ready for her.
Circa 1980: Holli seems to be getting along fine at school and Bethany at nursery school. The story is that the kindergarten classes were taking exams. Holli knew all her letters, so the teacher gave her a book to see if she could read. She told her "I can't read! But I can count to 79 in Spanish" and proceeded counting. Quite a character.
