His Voice in Mine

"It doesn't matter who my father was, it matters only who I remember he was." - Anne Sexton

When I left for college in 1987 cell phones were just a novelty technology. No one I knew owned a one. Seriously, even land line phones were scarce at USD. The dorms weren't yet wired for individual phone service, and each room had an intercom that would alert you if there was a call waiting at the front desk: one buzz for you, two buzzes for your roommate. 

Since calling an out of state number required an expensive collect call - or spending a fistful of laundry quarters at the pay phone - I was only expected to contact home once every two weeks. That wasn't out of the ordinary; most kids spent very little time on the phone. The mailboxes were where the action was, especially around 4:30 when the "out of school" mail arrived. It's understandable. Twenty two cents didn't buy you much talking time, but it did buy you a stamp.

My problem was that I got homesick. To my surprise, I found that I really missed hearing from my parents. Frequently I'd visit the long bank of student mail boxes to see if anything was behind my box door, but the box was always empty.


Of course I didn't think to write a letter myself to get the ball rolling. Instead, when I came home for Thanksgiving break, I tried to guilt trip mom. "You know, it gets kinda depressing watching all the other kids get letters from home and never getting any myself." I was whining, hoping she'd take the bait. She didn't. To this day my mother sends cards, but rarely writes more than a single line, and that's okay.


I did start getting letters, though.  On the Wednesday after Thanksgiving I found my first one. To my disbelief, it was from my father. He was listening? And he didn't just write once. Or just once every two weeks. Dad wrote every weekday.

For the next five and a half years I would find a hand addressed envelope waiting for me after school. Inside would be a single sheet of yellow paper with a brief description of what my parents had for dinner last night, if their pets were in trouble, or how any home projects were coming along. I'd read news about my grandparents and people at church. I'd learn how much rain fell yesterday and what were the symptoms of mom's latest cold. The letters even followed me here to Des Moines for my first year of teaching.

It's true that every letter was a small gift, but you can't receive a gift everyday and appreciate it as much as the first. Sadly, opening them became a bit of a chore, and some letters went unread - unceremoniously thrown away or left forgotten in a desk drawer.

My dad was diagnosed with clinical depression in the spring of 1993, and the letters stop coming. His battle with mental illness wasn't a roller coaster - it was a rolling train wreck charging south. He became such a mess.

Now that Dad is gone I have a choice. I can dwell on the man he became after he got sick, or I can remember the guy who wrote me all those sweet letters. Although not easy, I'm going for the latter. I kept a small stack of his unopened letters, and two years ago I started the tradition of opening one on Father's Day. I sit alone on the edge of our bed, tear open the envelope, and read what the snow totals, my mom, or the neighbors were up to eighteen years ago. I think it's the closest you can get to time travel. If I read the letter out loud, I can even hear his voice in mine.

Why tell you all of this? Well, the next time you read one of my posts and you wonder, "Who does this? Who takes the time to write about such trivial stuff?" Well, you've got your answer.  

Barry's son does that. And he gets it from his dad.

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