Thank you Elsie. Thank you for calling Sid out. I wish we could read your exact words. I hope they were firm and self-assured, but maybe they were sad and full of insecurities. Either way, they were words that Sid needed to hear.

We’ve all been inconsiderate friends or lovers at some point. We’ve all left messages unanswered and calls unreturned. We’ve all let our busy lives leave others hanging, wondering what we were thinking. But only some of us have ever been called out, brought to task, made to state our true intentions. And those are the points at which I believe lives pivot, relationships grow, or connections are left to fade. We can look back and see those moments with hindsight, but I wonder how many lost opportunities we have missed from a lack of gumption, from a lack of courage to speak our mind.

Thank goodness Elsie did find her courage to speak up. But I wonder, if Elsie had just held her tongue, hadn’t picked up a pen and essentially asked what the hell was going on, would I even be here? Would their relationship have ever progressed? Or would it have simply faded away as Sid waited and waited for a better time to write? Would Elsie have found other suitors who paid better attention? Or would she have resigned herself to a future of being the maiden daughter who stayed home to take care of her aging parents? There were many options waiting in that moment.

Thank goodness Sid found his courage too, that he too found his tongue and let it speak. His letter isn’t eloquent, it isn’t even a great apology. It rambles close to excuses. It barely dodges making light of his carelessness. But it is heartfelt. You do feel that bachelor Sidney Sanderson had suddenly realized that he did care very much that Elsie Dorries of Buffalo New York was in his life. He wrestles with words on the paper just as he is struggling to understand why he has been so inconsiderate. It may not be a great letter, but clearly it was an effective letter.

That long-ago moment in late March of 1933 now feels like a pin on the timeline of our family history. It would take a long time (spoiler alert!) before Sid and Elsie would formalize their relationship, but when Sid hurriedly scrawled this letter to Elsie, he cast their story forward. And when Elsie read it and chose to accept his apology, she let its momentum carry them onwards. Their future had begun.

And that was a good thing for me.

A Wednesday night (it will be this as I am startled by the date)

Oh Elsie,
I should be truly miserable and depressed and ashamed when I received your letter but curiously enough it was none of these I felt but elation and joy, it came like a burst of sunshine in these stormy days ushering in the spring. But I was bitter towards myself that I had brought you any unhappiness; after all I know my feelings towards you, how much I enjoy you and what a good time I have when I am with you, but you cannot know it so well if I am silent. And what can you have thought all these weeks – a great deal, perhaps, I could scarcely expect you to think of me at all? What perverseness could have possessed me that I just put off from day to day, until I wondered how you would feel when I did write, what is a pleasant occupation, this business of long-distance conversation with you by letter. Somehow letter writing seems to be one of my troubles, but it becomes worse than that when one is unmannerly, careless and stupid about it as I have been. What use to say that I have been on the point of chatting with you again and again, that this week at the latest, even without your letter, you would have heard from me. Why plead intentions when all this must seem to you most uncomplimentary? Those bring little joy to you, and you can’t tell from them that you have often been in my thoughts.
But how thoughtless of me! Here I have been, resting content in the knowledge that we had many happy hours together at Christmas, suddenly silent and expecting you to interpret that same silence as the outburst of a firm friendship. Yes, Elsie, it is absurd; I’m proud you wrote but extremely regretful that there was any necessity for your letter. There is nothing, that is the ridiculousness of the situation. I guess I expected you to be a mind reader. First I wanted to see if I couldn’t get to Buffalo during exam week, and then to do this and that – but why wait?
And the more I think it, the more I wonder why? Why? Why? No wonder you were puzzled.
I can’t attach a chatty letter to this absurd missile, so it must go by itself. It’s too late now, but I hope you only glanced through to see that I am alive and well, that you have been in my thoughts, and then tossed it away. It’s a poor bit of business. I wonder whether it is related to another “non-smoking jag” on which I embarked on January 15^th. I shall go back to Camels and then the letters will flow to Elsie.
From a repentant
Sid