Continued The Correspondent
Caroline Dobsen
Dear Caroline,
I am pleased to hear your paper turned out a good score.
It was well written, if a little exaggerated.
There were a few dates you mixed up, but that’s no matter to anyone but myself, and the undergraduate college I attended was Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania, but otherwise I did think it well done.
Concise, efficient with language, good spelling, intriguing structure.
I will say, I noticed that you rather painted me in a heroic light.
It’s kind of you, but I was no hero, Caroline.
I made errors, decisions that bore lasting effects on the lives of strangers.
It doesn’t matter that it’s not in your paper, it doesn’t matter at all, but it matters to me that you know that.
I hope you are having an enjoyable summer. I believe you mentioned lifeguarding as a summer position. You must be QUITE a swimmer to put yourself in charge of the lives of children. At which of the community pools do you sit on the stand? Will you take any trips? It escapes me if you have siblings.
I’m sorry you lost your grandmother to Alzheimer’s. My brother-in-law is dealing with the same thing and it’s ugly ugly. Awful to witness, and probably worse if you’re inside the body, but nobody knows and that makes it worse. I feel sorry any child has to bear witness to a thing like that.
Those juice glasses with the stripe and circle did have a moment. I’ve had them for such a long time it’s amazing the color doesn’t wear off, but of course I don’t stick them in the dishwasher. Hand wash only with a soft cloth.
Getting to your questions about the letter writing.
I’ll start by saying your note heartened me because here is a secret: my letters have been far more meaningful to me than anything I did with the law.
The letters are the mainstay of my life, where I was only practicing law for thirty years or so.
The clerkship was my job; the letters amount to who I am.
I haven’t the foggiest idea how many I’ve written.
I certainly didn’t keep track along the way, and I’ve never gone back to count the ones I’ve received.
More than a thousand, I guess. I have written letters since I was a child.
I wrote to the odd author or teacher, cousins I rarely saw.
I wrote to the local fire chief, Harry Truman, people like that.
I had a pen pal, she was a friend who lived down the street from me and then she moved away in high school, and we are still pen pals writing every month or six weeks, give or take, for sixty years.
We married brothers (I divorced mine). Oh!
Hers is the one with Alzheimer’s. That’s where it started, I guess, though I hadn’t ever thought of it like that until now.
Rosalie Boyd. (Well, now she’s Van Antwerp, too.) She is my daughter’s godmother.
How’s all that for a big complicated mess?
I write to anyone that strikes me. Friends, lawmakers, editors, teachers, diplomats, authors.
Authors are my favorite. It’s harder now, of course, because with the internet people are e-mailing (it’s faster, simpler, less fussy than having to have the materials, the pen, the moment at the desk, the stamp, etc.) and it can be more difficult to find an address, but usually if you really try, you will.
And one ought to try. An e-mail can in no way replace a written letter.
It does concern me that one day all the advancement of technology will do away with the post, but I hope to be dead and gone long before then.
To your question of ‘how’: I sit down at my desk with a stack of the letter writing paper and the pens I like.
My desk faces a small window toward the river and there are honeysuckle bushes beneath it, which, in summer, attract hummingbirds, and my garden lies beyond.
The house will be silent, or if I am feeling passionate, Tchaikovsky or Stravinsky from the CD player.
I’ll have a glass of water or a cup of tea.
Typically I write on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for about two hours.
Whatever I don’t finish gets pushed to Saturday, and of course, if the mood strikes me at off times (a shocking current event or anger, usually), I’ll sit down then as well.
I mail-order my letter writing paper from England; once I discovered it, I quit trying anything else.
I visit the post office once a month for stamps.
I never buy seasonal stamps, only your classic stars and stripes, because there is a certain structure, an ORDER, that needs to be obeyed.
If you keep the mechanism in order, then the contents of the correspondence, the material of the letters I mean, can go anywhere.
Be anything. You can write to anyone. You can say anything you like.
I write slowly. A letter might take me an hour or more.
I do not rush. I think through each sentence.
My hand does not get tired. You mustn’t rush.
When you rush you pen things you didn’t mean and you tire.
It takes patience to say exactly what one means, to think of the right word.
Sometimes I write a draft and mark it up, then write a clean copy to send.
I believe one ought to be precious with communication.
Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal.
Sometimes, Caroline, the easiest inroad is to begin with a thank you, for a gift or a kindness or a letter, you know, and then take it from there.
Answer every question they’ve asked, and ask your own, and you will have created a never-ending circuit of curiosity and learning.
You’re most welcome to write me back if you’d like, but my suggestion would be to think of someone who is far away, someone you don’t see frequently or speak to often on the phone but dearly wish you could, and write to them instead. I wish you the very best.
Warm regards,
Sybil Van Antwerp