A soft hand

At last a chance to write.

Work and life have conspired to keep me from the laptop.  But not this morning.

Today’s topic, in fact, is the written word, a mother’s letter and the power of paper.

‘Tis a lot!

My mother wrote me a letter. Actually, it wasn’t to me.  It was to her parents.  But it was about me, and so – with her and her parents now gone – I consider it sort of mine.

My sister Barb sent it to me.  I guess Mom had found and retrieved it after her father died. Thanks, sis! 

“Dearest Dad and Mother,” she wrote on Saturday, Dec. 11^th, 1954.  I was born the prior Thursday. She was writing from her bed in Deaconess Hospital in St. Louis.

“Well, as George Gobel says, ‘Here I am!’ or  ‘Here we are!’ – and it looks like I surprised everyone, including myself!!”

The surprise was that I had arrived early – nine days, according to the letter. Odd, because I’ve found myself consistently late for so much else since.

It’s interesting to read letters like this.  First, my mother was a journalist, so her writing was always lively, conversational, unpretentious, upbeat … just like herself.  Second, and selfishly more interesting to me, was her reporting of my arrival.

“Douglas Gordon is a mighty cute little boy and looks like a potential football player, just like Bill.”

Ah, Mom, thanks. (Bill’s my brother.)

I tried football in junior high, by the way, but quit after some ox knocked the wind out of me and left me wheezing like a ruptured accordion.  

“He weighed 8 lbs 10 ozs, so I hate to think what he would have weighed if I’d held out nine days longer – probably would have been a 10-lb baby!!”

And even chubbier, I bet.

“He has coal-black hair and a round little face.”

The hair’s gray now but the face is still a bit round.

“His arms and legs are relatively thin but very long, and his fingers are long, too.”

She then speculated that, because of the long digits, perhaps I’d be an engineer like my father.  I'm not  sure why one would lead to the other.  But we know that didn’t work out anyway.

She then went into detail of how the early arrival played out … labor pains starting on Wednesday, up all night worrying I’d pop out before breakfast, the pains growing closer  by 9 a.m., then the rush to the hospital with siblings Linda, Mary Ann and Bill wrapped in blankets in the car’s backseat.  Then in to the delivery room, then a couple of injections of something from the doc to “speed things up,”  then – ta da! – at 10:50 a.m. little Dougie came into the world.

Mom went on to call me a blockhead – “at first his head looked almost as wide as long” – but also a quick learner when it came to grub – “he comes in at feeding time with eyes wide open and crying lustily.” 

That still happens today if I’ve missed lunch.

“He’s all-boy and healthy!” she concluded.

The interesting thing is that these details are all facts I didn’t know of until now. Okay, the all-boy part I figured out long ago.  But the rest is news. 

And that’s the point.  Without the letter, this part of my past would have disappeared like Mom herself.

We don’t write letters anymore.  Oh, sure, we write emails, we text, we tweet, we share pictures and even videos.  But it’s all electronic, in the “cloud” or stashed byte by byte in our computers and phones.  Rarely do we see the clues to personality or mood found in another’s handwriting.  Emoticons hardly do the trick.

And this isn’t necessarily new. I remember the hot, humid days of Boy Scout camp, where by the second week we ached for word from home.  At last a letter from Mom arrived … cheerful, comforting, written in her relaxed script.  My tent mate received a typed letter from his father, a banker … typed by his secretary.  Heartfelt? Maybe. Sterile?  Yes.

Okay, we can print out a thoughtful email – emoticons and all – and save it.  But do you?  I don’t.

I suspect we write more to each other now than any previous generation. But this vital correspondence usually is deleted … lost to the ages. 

I have a friend near Indianapolis.  He’s a high-school English teacher.  He’s also a calligraphist. Each Christmas, he sends us best wishes in a letter written with a fountain pen, each word a piece of art itself, each sentence perfectly formed, cogent and informative.

The letter is beautiful in so many ways.

Just about a year ago, he joined Facebook.  His posts were sporadic, yes, but he hung in there – mainly because, I think, his former students loved to chat.

His last post was Jan. 26th.  Friends’ inquiries aren’t acknowledged.  He’s offline.

My guess is the attraction wore thin.  He’s a man of paper, favoring books that smell of ink, where every single letter and word matters, where his power comes, indeed, from his fruitful pen.

My mother always liked my friend.

I’m no Luddite. I love my iPhone.  But it’s moments like this that give me pause.

Thanks, Mom, for the new memories.  I especially like the square-head thing.  I’m glad you wrote so many letters.  They amount to love, shared, still today.

By the way, my mother concluded her missive to her parents with this:

“Every time I get a letter from you and Dad I feel all teary-eyed reading it.”

Letters can do that … especially when written with a soft hand and full heart.