Letters From a Locker

My father used to say that if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Sometimes it felt as though I’d ridden a thousand miles worth of wishes. I wondered so many things about my family, but my uncle, the only person left to tell me anything, lay in a hospice bed at home. Thankfully, he received my letter before his heart valves gave out, letting him know how much I loved him. Covid prevented me from visiting, and my uncle hadn’t communicated for years. I remained the only descendant of my grandparents and my uncle had no children. My aunt and I began the daunting task of clearing out the storage locker every Saturday for a month and a half.

“You are welcome to anything belonging to your uncle or grandparents. They should go to your children. Don’t worry, we organized everything so it should go quickly,” she said, but upon arrival, the lock had been changed and the office handed her a new key. “They said they found the lock broken one day,” she relayed nervously. We lifted the large metal door to find boxes open and strewn about, but strangely nothing seemed to be stolen. “It couldn’t have been your uncle. He was in so much pain for so long and he wouldn’t have rifled through them like that.” My aunt felt violated and confused by the disarray.

“We’ll take it one step at a time for as long as you want,” I assured her.

My grandparents stored boxes in their attic for decades. Those boxes went to a storage unit in their town when they passed, and ten years ago, I helped retrieved them to this locker. I’m not sure that my uncle really looked through any of them. A treasure trove couldn’t adequately describe the contents found therein. Akin to a time capsule, the locker contained stained glass windows, old cameras, antique toys, client files from my uncle’s practice and a hodgepodge of items in each of my grandparent’s boxes. Amidst old checkbooks, vacation memorabilia, napkins from weddings and Knick knacks, were stacks and stacks of letters. I felt like a truffle pig rooting out mushrooms in an enchanted forest. I speculated if my livingroom could contain this epic crow’s nest of riches. The piece de resistance donned flowers on a white rectangular box. Inside contained pictures of my Great Grandmother Peck, and her first husband, as well as a great, great, great grandfather standing with his son’s family in front of their home in Sweden, the Swedish flag flying on the flagpole next to the house. Pictures of people I had only heard whispers of on both sides of my mother's family. I remember my mother telling me that she loved her grandmother, but I knew next to nothing about her. Not yet anyway.

During the week, I went through the boxes, shredding old checks and receipts, while organizing documents and letters into years, then months within the years. Stacks of letters with sticky notes covered my entry table from the early 1900’s until my grandparent’s passing. Every trip to the locker brought infinitely more delight as I began typing the letters historically into my laptop. I laughed seeing all the checks for seven dollars that my grandfather paid to Russ Minkler for mowing his lawn. My heart ached seeing checks written to doctors every week for years trying to cure my grandmother from migraines, shock therapy, cancer, and ultimately having her voice box removed.

“We have to find 1940!” I told her. I’m missing 1940! There’s got to be a box with 1940 here somewhere,” and of course there was. “Did you know that my mother,” I would begin telling my Aunt, who would listen then explain things about that year to me. History became real as I lived it vicariously. I watched the world unfold with pen and paper as my Grandmother Donna wrote to her mother Ruth. There were letters with no dates or envelopes, but knowing the town she wrote them from at the top of the page were clues to where they belonged. I inserted their responses into the threads of history like priceless puzzle pieces. I saw Grandma Ruth move to boom towns which are now ghost towns, and found pictures of a gold mine that my great grandfather’s brothers used to own. Unbeknown to me, my Great Grandfather Tom had lived in the town I was raised in. The last letter he wrote to my grandmother at age 12, assured her that someday she’d be on easy street after he raised 500 chickens, but he died early from an operation before he could ever farm the land. My Grandparents couldn’t vote in Alaska because it was still a territory in the early 1940’s, but they listened to Franklin D. Roosevelt on the radio. One day my grandfather bought a whole salmon for a quarter. Those were the days! My Grandmother got tired of people calling my beautiful mother, “a doll” but my Great Grandmother Ruth always told her to “kiss our sweet baby.” She loved my mother so much and knitted so many outfits for her. Both my Great Grandmothers were avid canners and gardeners, with one putting up 300 jars in the basement during the depression.

My Great Grandmother worked at a hospital. In her letters are births and deaths, the weather, how to plant seeds and which ones to soak overnight so they will sprout a week sooner. She caught more fish than the legal limit and wasn’t sorry about it. The woman held spunk in the palm of her hand. I began to realize why my mother loved her so much. I loved her now too. Every word from her pen was wit and sage wisdom swelling my heart with pride for her character and integrity.

Then I found the twenty-two page document in the black folder stuffed in a box, where great grandmother’s great grandparents, recounted the stories of their youth. Her Great Grandfather fought in the Civil War for the North. Lincoln stood for four hours shaking every hand of the men who brought the victory, and my great, great, great grandfather would never forget it. While he fought for freedom, his wife kept a farm, raising their children alone. One day she saved her daughter Alice who fell down the well. One son was bitten by a rattlesnake but he ran all the way home. He was delirious for three days but lived because the poison went throughout his whole body instead of going straight to his heart. A baby daughter fell out of a rocking chair and into the fire and died from her burns that same day. Another time, she heard soldiers in her barn. She quickly took the coffee from the stove and spread it inside the brand new cornmeal barrel. When the soldiers entered the house, her daughter Alice said, “Mother! They’re getting into the cornmeal!” to which she whispered loudly enough for them to hear, “That’s the one the rats got into.” Seeing the discolored cornmeal in the top of the barrel, they took the almost empty, stale barrel, leaving them the full fresh barrel. The woman possessed wisdom with a side of steel fortitude. She raised flax and sheep and made clothes for her family with what she called, “flaxy woolsy.” Page after page told me more than I could have ever dreamed or imagined. Homesteading was as hard as flint and nearly impossible to navigate without unwavering determination.

I’m up to 1963 and still typing letters from my mother and uncle in and out of college. The sixties were one big cocktail party, but those weren’t written by the Godly mother that raised me. They were written when she was a young woman finding her place in society, going on adventures around the world and dating young military men while teaching forty-two children in one classroom. It’s given me perspective and insight into my family dynamics. I understand my mother better. I have answers that might not have come without those letters, as I lost her at age twenty-three, while finding my own place in the world. There remained a hometown newspaper article with a picture of my Grandfather holding up letter from the Navy carrier where my father and the crew retrieved both the shuttle and the astronauts returning from the moon.

Knowing I possess some of the same talents or sense of humor, or proclivities as my bygone family gives me a sense of belonging stronger than a rope of three strands which cannot be easily broken. A few letters however, are priceless jewels from other relatives to my grandparents. With unabashed passion, they boldly penned invitations for their faith, bringing tears to my eyes. The family Bible, so old and worn with use, stands as an example for me of their faithfulness. How I ache to hold them in my arms in the presence of God and thank them for their humble words written as reminders to love God and love others.

My father used to say that if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, but I no longer need to ride. My heart is full from a million paper horses.