Should I Open?
A large brown envelope arrived recently in snail mail from Ashtabula, Ohio. It contained copies of letters I wrote to a young woman named Mary when we were 14. We met in the northeastern Ohio township, and decided to keep in touch when my summer vacation ended.
I found her on Facebook, and we got in touch after four decades. When she realized I’d become a writer, she mentioned my letters in a box in her attic. Would I like copies? What could I have possible said in those letters to a relative stranger 300 miles away? And why would she save them into this millennium?
“They’re about what you’d expect a 14 year old to write about,” she said.
Would I like to meet myself at 14? Not that I could go back and talk some sense into my head, but what I think about those times now and what I was actually saying at the time, well, they’re mountains apart.
Stored in My Memory Bank: The Pink Pig, Dad’s Silver “Washers”
Dad was a carpenter, and each week he gave me the washers from his pay envelope. I’d plunk them onto my piggy bank. Yeah, that’s right, washers as in nuts, bolts and washers.
He told me washers weren’t money and I couldn’t spend them on candy or toys. When we filled the pink pig, we brought them to the big, boring stone bank. They said when I turned 16, I could take the money out.
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