Thirty-One Letters
To convince myself that 1997, the year both my parents died, was long ago, I look for situations that I know would flummox them were they to come to life again. For instance, my father, who often picked me up from the airport, would have no idea of what a cell phone lot is. Weekly I am reminded of how my mother would be shocked by the wedding announcements in the New York Times: No more Smith girls marrying Yale-ies, walked down the aisle by their industrialist fathers.
My mother came by her preoccupation with the NYT society pages rightfully. These announcements provided aspirational hints and guidance for her mother, my grandmother. Grandma Minnie, born in Belarussia, immigrated to the US at age 9. Her father was housepainter. I remember her as speaking perfectly unaccented English. A judge-y voice in her head corrected her as well as others in her vicinity —at every turn. After reading something I had written, she complimented me with: “The reverberations of your mother’s upbringing linger on.” Like my mother, Minnie yearned for measurable results — tokens of excellence that included degrees from fancy schools, fashionable clothing labels and money. She and my mother both wanted to be admired.
And then there was me, politically left and socially rebellious, blue jeans and books. So when a relative fixed up my pre-college self with a very distant from cousin from Yale — let’s call him David Phillips Goldstein — I approached the date with curiosity. David was a sophomore, pre-med, Jewish, blond and earnest. He loved sailing. “Quite a catch.”
I liked David. He said he’d “never met anyone like me” and I’m sure that was true, partly because he was the opposite of rebellious and mostly because he hadn’t dated much.
Anyway, David wrote a lot of letters, and we spent lots of time together: at his dorm, at a nearby hotel, at my home, at his home in DC. His letters describe nervousness about classes and grades, the classical music he was listening to, issues with roommates. He had taken a class with Robert Penn Warren that required him to write a poem. It was an affecting piece — describing his world where bystanders clapped in approbation. I saved all these letters, in part because they document a full arc — the meeting, the exchanges, the break up — and in part because I save stuff.
I went off to a small, midwestern college with an excellent writing program. At the time it felt like going abroad. The first week I met a guy from a Southern Baptist family from East St Louis, IL. He was handsome, a brilliant student, a good poet. Despite differences in background we connected immediately and deeply. David wrote to say how thrilled he was to score two tickets to the Harvard-Yale game, and I wrote to tell him about my new life, that he and I would no longer be a couple.
Fast forward fifty-plus years. At my Uncle Seymour’s memorial I realized that his middle name, like David’s, was “Phillips” Where did this name come from, I wondered. And I thought to call David. Years ago I had heard that he had become a psychiatrist, that he’d had one marriage that ended unhappily and another that seemed just fine. Two daughters, no grandchildren. David was easy to find in the Boston suburbs, so I dialed, fully expecting immediate recognition.
“Who are you?” he asked. I reminded him. I thought that my recollections might jog of his memory. I asked about his roommate Ben, his brother and parents. I reminded him of the poem he wrote in Robert Penn Warren’s class.
“This is so strange“ he admitted. “Particularly strange because I didn’t date much at all. . . . And you are right about all of those details.” In conversation he was both forthcoming and puzzled. He knew nothing about the name Phillips.
I clicked off the phone, disconcerted. And then I went upstairs to the box where I keep stuff I don’t know what to do with. There were David’s thirty-one letters.
I smile still at my takeaways: so glad to have saved stuff. So glad that my memory works the way it does. And so very glad to have gotten past the aspirations that shaped my grandmother’s and my mother’s lives.