Sorting Letters
Finally the last unpacked box awaited my attention and I began the process of sorting letters. Based on my prior experience of sorting the thousand letters about which I wrote in Running to Thousand Letters, I estimated there were at least 1,000 in my new collection as well.
Although I preferred to work indoors, it soon became clear that three weeks rather than months were insufficient to allow my funky-smell-elimination-with-baking-soda method to work. The baking soda and letters needed to sit longer as the American Library Association advised me in their preservation article. But, my impatience won.
Solar Power
When I bought the first set of 1,000 letters at an estate sale in the 1990’s, they also smelled mildewy. I had also removed those letters from their original container and used baking soda to extract the smell. But I didn’t have the sense of urgency with those letters as I did with these. I didn’t know the people in those letters and I didn’t know myself that well either. I took almost twenty years to dive into both.
These letters though, about two-thirds of which appeared to have been written by Helen (Helen Hemlin Cooke, my paternal grandmother if you’re just joining the blog) …it’s hard to explain without sounding religious. But, I’ll say it. The letters called to me; I just couldn’t get them out of my head. I hoped the dry weather outdoors from Colorado’s warm winter sun would help reduce the stink.
Sorting as Meditation
I had learned in my first project that sorting letters by date was the best way to pursue mysteries. In Episode 5’s timelapse of the sorting, the sun moved across the yard as I worked all afternoon, wiping down one letter after another and sorting them by date, if one existed. Most letters had an envelope with a legible postmark. The ones that didn’t, I opened to inspect for a dated letter.
One letter at a time sorting turned into a mantra and meditation without much effort.
I remember thinking about what to do with the letters. Another book? Donate them if they have historical value? Digitize them? What would happen to them if I didn’t do something with them? What was my ‘Why?’ Why was I spending time on these letters instead of anything else? Should I spend my time on the living and not in the dead? But I am alive and therefore I am spending time on the living even though my subject is dead.
And maybe that was the point.
My friend Marcy often arises in my memory in these moments when I consider spending time with those who are dead rather than prioritize those that are alive. I missed her, but still … seven years after her death as I held her hand, called hospice … made sure her lips were moist, called hospice … begged God or anyone or anything for just one more day. After I called hospice for the last time, I didn’t allow too many moments of conscious thinking about that morning.
Maybe it was time to allow a few of those moments. Is that what Helen was trying to tell me? Or me trying to tell myself through her?
Unprotected Edges
The safety-conscious among you will notice I was cleaning and sorting letters on a 2nd floor deck without a railing. The prior winter I had been descending steps attached to this deck. They were rotting, unstable, and leaning. We had reinforced the stair treads for several years. But finally the poor construction that preceded our presence failed.
After one of our wet, foot-plus dumps of spring snow, one of the lower steps collapsed under me. Thankfully the snow and nearness to ground saved me from injury. By the following summer, we couldn’t save the stairs any longer. I removed them (See Episode 22 – Building at 11:04.) and the deck boards, which were brittle and cracking. At least an artist in the neighborhood would take some of the wood for a project.
While I’d replaced the deck boards, I’d not yet replaced the railing or stairs because I hadn’t researched what would be compliant with our city code, affordable, and aesthetically pleasing. Stay tuned for updates on this in future episodes.
Moving Inside
Sorting letters was not without welcome distractions from this internal questioning. Finding a note from Charles to Helen in which he described slippers he’d sent her from Keflavík, at first had me wondering if I’d find the slippers. That gave way to questioning what happened to their marriage. They had divorced and I’d only heard vague mentions of a woman in Japan, who he married then divorced, then little about his third wife, Anne.
But, relationships change and some divorce. I had little interest in going down this path.
With the sun about to descend behind Boulder’s mountains and cast a cool shadow on my work, I moved inside to finish in various cross-legged positions.
Bottom of the Bin
At the bottom of the bin, I discovered additional articles and manuscripts. It was tempting to go through them, but there were more letters. I added the articles to the writing bin and inserted a row in the “For Later” List.
I sorted the last shoebox of letters, which seemed to smell the worst and have the most dust and debris from being stored uncovered in Dad and Arlene’s barn. I found a letter with coins, World War 2 newspaper clippings, and a few letters without either an envelope or a date.
But finally early in the evening, I had unpacked the bin, wiped down all the letters of debris and dust, and sorted the letters by date.
Letters from the Leather Bag
In Episode 4, I pulled a few letters from the Army-green, leather bag. The inflexible leather suggested it had been in a dry environment. I don’t remember where I found these letters at Dad’s. Regardless, it was difficult to unzip and pry open a large enough opening to extract the letters.
There were two letters from the War Department, a letter from the Associated Press, a letter from someone in Vancouver, and what appeared to be two letters from the dog. The rest of the letters, about sixty in total, were from Helen to Charles between September 1942 and February 1943.
All the Letters
After extracting the leather bag I still believed I had about 1,000 letters. I estimated about 600 or 700 letters written during World War 2. I stored those from Helen to Charles in three shoebox sized bins and those from Charles to Helen in two shoebox sized bins. Another shoebox sized bin stored letters from others to Helen or Charles or both. There were the four file folders of letters, that we explored in Episode 4, from fans of Charles’ book, Playing the Piano for Pleasure. And, finally a last shoebox sized bin stored letters to Helen from others in the 1920’s.
I also found stray letters from Helen to my Dad. In addition, she sent him two large envelopes full of political cartoons.
The Kerry Blue Writes Too
I did not know at the time I published the episode that Seán was a Kerry Blue Terrier. Border collies had captured my attention since the 1990’s and they and my rescue, Sadie, were all that I’d given my attention since. I would learn while indulging a distraction and finding Charles’ March 27, 1943 New Yorker article titled, Distraction, in Episode 24, that Seán was a Kerry Blue.
At this time though, I was enjoying Seán’s thoughts relayed through one of the letters he wrote to Charles…with Helen’s help… of course.
Enjoy the episode and please remember to like and subscribe. Thank you for following Another Thousand Letters.
