Living in 1922

The rains have stopped and everywhere the wildflowers are coming out. Birds are building their nests (we have swallows this year who think the bookstore building is a good cliff), people come and go, the outer world is full of crisis and opportunity.
And obligatory meetings with politicians, and board meetings, and demonstrations, and free soup for the street folks, and deadlines.

And in all of this, I have been living, in the evenings, back in 1922.

In 1922, in the autumn and winter, it was cold in Wyoming. Rain fell for days on end in Southern California as well. And a 27 year old schoolteacher and a 31 year old house carpenter /small time baseball player were writing to each other almost every day.

The ball player started the correspondence, hoping the schoolmarm would forgive his boldness in doing so. He'd been slapped once for his pains, he writes, and even at a distance the slap still stings a bit--but he's willing to go slow and be politely respectful.

She responded immediately: "your letter surprised me in more ways than one and as for slapping you one, well, I'm still capable of doing it again"

But within a few letters he is declaring his "true and sincere love".

She, however, is being quite nonemotional.

The letters came to my youngest brother in a box from our uncle. Each day my brother scans one into his computer and sends it to me. He's read the whole boxful, which lasts from October 1922 until March 1923--but he says he's not giving away the ending.

I know the ending, however, since in July 1923 these two married, and in spring of the next year my father was born.

I just don't know how they got to that end. Here my grandfather is writing about a great book he's just encountered--the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam. He says it is full of profound philosphy, so deep he has to read only a few quatrains at a time.

She retorts that she is acquainted with that gentleman's book, and thought it was improper--all that "do as you may" stuff, all those dancing women and all that wine.

I think my dear grandfather must have won her over on this one though (they discuss it a bit more some letters later), for when they married one of the gifts was a lithograph that used to hang in their bedroom, Maxfield Parrish's rendition of the Loaf of Bread and Jug of Wine and Thou Beside Me...verse, in which the lovers gaze at each other as they sit beneath a very Southern California oak tree. It was a picture I loved as a child, and which I spent hours staring at. I loved the blue of the sky--Maxfield Parrish blue--and the snowy mountains; the rocks, the enthalled lovers. When I was 18 my grandmother gave it to me, and it hangs now on the wall beside my desk at the shop My partner scorns it as "a picture suited for a bar"; I laugh at him as my grandfather probably chuckled over the school teacher's qualms about the poetry.

He sends her roses from California. It is snowing in Wyoming, and the boarding house fires are small and my grandmother's feet are so cold she practically sticks them into the flames to warm them. The roses last for more than a week, and in each letter from her they are mentioned: still glowing, though the snow has reached blizzard proportions.

"What color do you think the roses were?" I email my little brother. He thinks red, of course. But I picture them in my mind as a huge, carefully packed and sent bundle of the tiny pink roses my grandmother so loved all her life long.

He sends her candy from California. He writes about his ball games, about his carpentry, about all the books he is reading. And every so often he darts in a word of love, and darts out again.

She admits to having friendly feelings towards him "and possibly more". She writes of her students (she has a classroom of 45 children of all ages, and one day marches the whole group down the mainstreet of the little rural town to go see a show "It was as if we made our own parade"), of her spats with her best friend Ruth, of visits to shows, of books, of making fudge.
She is woefully homesick for her mother--such a young 27 year old she seems. He, the youngest of a family of 12, whose father had died during his son's time in the army in the first world war, writes "there would be something wrong if you did not miss your family".

It is so odd, and so sweet, to meet these young lovers through their letters. My grandfather died when I was 13, leaving me some of his books; my grandmother, who missed him every day of her life, survived him for decades. I remember sitting at her feet the day of his funeral, looking at the tears falling down her face, wishing I could say something to her, but simply holding her hand and listening to all the people who came to give condolences.

He quotes poetry at random; he makes silly jokes. She pretends annoyance, and then relents.
Today in 1922 it is nearing Christmas. She will be taking a train to her old homestead, arriving at 4 in the morning. "It will be dark, but I want to surprise them. I will be very bold and pretend to be brave and walk quickly". He is thinking of traveling down to the Mexican border for Christmas. He has just met an old army friend, who has told him some of the old gang have already died. He thinks time is fleeting, and we must live honestly and well while we may.
Like it or not, he says, "this is the real thing, this love I have for you".