Digging out the computer studio, came across a copy of a letter Mom wrote to my brother's high school principal, back in February 1961. Have written about the letter in earlier posts. Came across it about 10 years ago. It still is deeply affecting. I feel for my mother & both brothers. The letter hits home so hard because Mike's experience - by both nature & nurture - within our family seemed to echo my own.
Mom wrote to Richard Gladish, "(Mike) is easy going by nature, lazy as a boy is apt to be, and truly is convinced that he doesn't have what it takes. He has always believed that Peter is a brain & of course got good marks. I have tried to show him that anything Peter achieved was through hard work... Peter had a much harder time concentrating than Mike has; Peter had to have silence & that is almost impossible some of the time. So he suffered...
"As your memory might tell you, Peter did not get good marks much of the time. He just made a lot of noise about studying with such a gross family around & all the hours he worked, he made a deep impression on Michael, who felt he could never, ever work so hard. With half that amount of work, Mike could be a top student, but he doesn't know it & maybe thinks it wouldn't be worth it."
This letter, which was SUCH an eye opener for me, wouldn't exist in today's social media environment. Mom would have sent an e-mail, which she might or might not have printed out. It most certainly would not have been written on Lockhart Lumber & Millwork stationery, as this one is. There, on a piece of paper, my mother's voice came singing to me, allowed me to listen in on a conversation she was having about a beloved son toward who she felt protective but unsure how to help. To read that, written when Mom was several years younger than I was on first finding it... Powerful.
Thinking about the stash of letters that turned up about 10 years ago, remembering the ZAM! POW! BOOM! impact they had as I read them, got me wondering about years down the road. How many folks - like me - think about printing out e-mails & blog postings, only to forget? Where will the priceless nuggets of information be tucked away, waiting for the just-right pair of eyes? On a floppy disk? A thumb drive? An inaccessible hard drive?
Gives me pause & an opportunity to praise the power - through millennia - of the simple hand-written letter.
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