Writing a Letter About Books and Ordinary Days.
Anna Blake
November 14
Here on the high desert prairie, the grasses are a flat dry tan, and we won’t see green again all winter. But as the ground lies fallow, it’s as if the sky stands up even taller and says watch this! Each sunrise is a pink and yellow watercolor wash that starts as safety-vest orange with a tawdry hot pink lace horizon and slowly fades pale in full light. The snow is late this year, but the wind has stripped the leaves from the big elm. They rustle deep on the ground, except for those that land in the horse pen, soon to be vacuumed up by those who like a crunchy fall treat.
This essay sounds like a letter home, doesn’t it? A bit of nostalgia got stuck in my eye as I read a book this week called The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. It’s an epistolary novel, meaning written in the style of letters instead of chapters. It’s a book that tells a big story quietly, with unexpected twists and turns. The main character is a cantankerous woman of a certain age who enjoys the anachronistic habit of writing letters. For over 40 years, she’s written to her best friend, to someone on an online help desk, to a college professor, and to authors whose books intrigue her. Sometimes people write to me after reading one of my books. I treasure those letters as tiny miracles for the effort and thoughtfulness they carry.
My friend Sarah, who is also a letter writer, recommended The Correspondent to me. I re-read the cards she has sent me and keep them. Before finishing the book, I recommended it to my girlhood friend, another Sarah, a retired librarian. She also writes letters, many with newspaper clippings. Doesn’t that take you back? I save her cards, too.
This time of year, the night drops early, and the air seems to hold a dry ache. Jolene sits out on her stump and stares at the night sky, improvising Viking scat songs and watching for coyotes. The weather of her people will be here soon, but she has never seen snow. There will be a party of course, with barking and zooming.
Meanwhile, Mister worries because the pads on his feet are pink and delicate. Everyone knows those are indoor paws, and a sign of aristocracy. Dogs of his class winter with other snowbirddogs. My people, northern farmers, are prone to snowbird-ism, too. But only after they retire. And that’s the thing; we don’t retire. Instead, we prepare.
The horses stand out of the wind, feeling the morning sun, as if it promotes hair growth, when it’s really the decreasing daylight hours doing it. As if standing close will keep them safe from danger. It’s the stack of winter hay that makes me feel safe. The tank heaters are in, and trickle charger is ready for the ATV. I still need to pick up a load of pea gravel for the areas that will freeze into impromptu ice rinks. I am too old for butt skating, but still young enough to shovel around 1600 pounds of stones out of my truck bed. Why there are no horsewoman superheroes, I will never know.
Then I remember my mother’s handwriting. Soon I will drag out the recipe box for Thanksgiving and see it on faded index cards again. I don’t make her recipes; her cooking was no prize. She never read a book, but sometimes after supper she would painstakingly write out a letter for a female family member. I have no idea what she said. I never received one, but I keep her handwriting. Long-distance calls weren’t in our budget, and even the time to write was precious. The letters had to be a lifeline to other women.
When I left home, I took up letter writing out of loneliness, I thought. The letters were pages long, telling half-true stories embellished by flexing my vocabulary. Most of the main characters were animals; that hasn’t changed. Then, I created a decoupage envelope using magazine photos that told a similar story. I was doing the cut-and-paste thing before PCs existed. What I know now is that I was a lonely baby memoirist.
During therapy in my 20s, my therapist encouraged me to write letters I would never mail. Rant letters to purge the emotional pain from the constant incoming judgment about my life choices. Write out those feelings, they said. Say everything you want to say, but don’t send the letter! Maybe the cheapest and most effective therapy was also the first kind.
Memoirs must have grown from diaries and letters. Consider it the ground-floor genre that supports other genres. Stories begin with what we know. The ingredients of romance, or science fiction, or fantasy come from the fertile soil of our lives. Some of us still loiter in memoir because we marvel that fiction will never be weirder than real life. We cannot look away.
After moving to the farm, my first $300 phone bill sent me back to writing long letters to friends, but I finally had a computer. Those emails didn’t come in hand-crafted envelopes, but I could attach photos. And the post office didn’t slow the mail down. My friends never wrote back in the quantity I wrote to them, and that was fine. I was writing to keep myself company during an isolated time. Not as crazy as talking to myself out loud, though I did that, too.
The Correspondent held email in disdain, the ugly stepchild of letter writing. It’s okay to be fussy. Email lacks the smell of paper and ink, the feel of holding of lives between the covers. The struggle of reading cursive chicken scratch. But email is still the art of writing, and some days, the dogs steal all the pens.
Reading this latest book, I felt sorry I wasn’t the correspondent that I used to be. Then I remembered how this blog started. In the beginning, all I wanted to do was write a little note home. My parents had passed on, so I wrote from home. Years later, I had grown a platform where I might help horses, so my writing turned to that. Writing gave me the opportunity to travel the world doing the work I loved. Years later, I’m back to writing letters from my farm. Life is a circle.
Was it arrogance to write Stable Relation, this story that had been stuck in my throat for so long? Why would a nobody like me write a memoir about my tiny life? My first readers answered me. They said I was telling their stories. What if memoir is a way to let us know we are more alike than different? That our small lives have meaning. That our voices matter.
Do you owe a note to a loved one? Is it too soon to start the Christmas letter? Or maybe you have a story you want to leave your family. Even a book fighting its way out to the world. I’ve been lucky to help a few memoirs from others enter this life. Writing is a time-honored chore when there is no free time. An art whose value impacts the author in inexplicable ways.
Each of the six books that followed the first one changed me again. What hasn’t changed is knowing there are diehard readers who still expect a letter from me every Friday morning. Thank you for keeping me grounded. I won’t disappoint, even if first recipient is me. A writing habit is a self-reward. A way of understanding thoughts and finding meaning in everyday life. I address it to friends I may never meet.
Hello. We’re all fine here on the farm. How are you?
I’ll be giving a writing class in January called How to Write a Memoir if You’re Nobody, open to anybody. Details coming soon.
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An audio version of this essay is available to subscribers on Substack.
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My books include three creative nonfiction books, two memoirs, and two poetry books. Available at all online booksellers, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and signed copies from me. Please consider leaving a rating or review.
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Women Aging Cantankerously