In the “stories” I was reading, the characters were the Sandersons, my mother’s family. Unlike the Campbells, who left a rich visual record of their time on earth, the Sandersons wrote down their experiences. I had known that some letters existed – my mother had made cracks about the less than passionate love letters between her parents. (Clearly she didn’t investigate the ones tied up with ribbons, but we’ll get to them later.) I had also read a bit of my Grandfather’s journal from World War I. But the depth and breadth of the records were only revealed as I slowly waded into the boxes.

We all know that texting, emailing, even calling, are recent additions to our communication pallet, but I think we tend to overlook what that means about writing. Quite simply, writing was really important. And given how much has survived, it is clear that my grandfather wrote a lot. He started as a child – at least one of his childhood diaries survives – and he continued straight through to the end of his life. I may remember his weekly phone calls (Sunday at 1:00 pm, just when you had finished church and lunch and were ready to go do something fun, the phone would ring and you knew it was going to be a while before the day could continue.) But even telephones, which were available to my grandfather for most of his life, did not seem to break the chain of his letters. My grandfather wrote letters home from France in WWI, he wrote to a girl he had become reacquainted with in the 1930’s, who became the sweetheart to whom he authored detailed, passionate (yes, Mom, passionate!) missives that took the place of sitting by her side in Buffalo where he longed to be. He continued to write to that woman who had become his wife whenever they were apart, and when their daughter left home for the first time, he began to write to her, at camp, at college, on the west coast and back on the east coast. His letters kept him connected.

My grandfather’s letters were often written like an extended conversation, news he received was referred to as much as the happenings at his end. And he didn’t just write about his coming and goings, he often touched on the books he read, the plays he saw and the politics of the day. This is what makes his letters so much fun to read. Just like his home, the letters are time capsules. Depending on what pile you dip into, you could be getting a report on the monotony of life on the base hospital in France where he volunteered to serve in 1917, and how he really wished he had waited and become a pilot. Or in a letter courting my grandmother, there would be gentle ribbing about “her man Hoover”, and my grandfather’s socialist leanings and his somewhat reluctant support of FDR. As his daughter entered the workforce in 1960, a series of letters debated the corporate culture of IBM versus other companies as a destination for a young working woman. There are so many places where his letters made me stop and think about what it meant to be alive when these were current affairs, not history.

As I read the letters, and I will admit I still haven’t read them all, I felt the urge to share them, but the question was with whom, and how, and more importantly, would anyone else really care? I had my doubts. Maybe they are only interesting to me because I knew and loved these people. I lived the end of these stories, and to me it is incredible to have been handed a prequel, but maybe there isn’t anything remarkable enough to make others care. My grandfather certainly wasn’t famous. He was intelligent, well educated and respected by his peers, but unknown in the grand scheme of things. My Grandmother often appears to have lived in the background, but she was a smart woman and an engaged citizen. They raised a daughter who was pretty remarkable in her own way, but certainly wasn’t well known. So why would I think that anyone else would want to read about them? And if I wanted to, how exactly would I share the story?

I’m still not sure of the answer to those two questions, but I do know that those letters have planted a seed. Somewhere between their words and mine, there is something waiting to be created. And there are lots of reasons to do it.

In fact, I made a list.

I’ll spare you the whole list, but the gist of the list was:

if I thought it was cool to think about,

if I was inspired to write about it,

if I thought it was worth sharing,

then I should just do it.

I needed to turn off the voice that said why spend all this time on a crazy idea that no one cares about. First of all someone does care – me! And second of all, there might just be one other person out there who thinks it’s kind of cool too. And really, when it comes right down to it, I guess what I am trying to do ~ start a conversation.  It only takes two people to do that, and I’m already talking.

But enough about me…

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

Samuel Butler