The Dead Letter Office

Greetings from our Nation’s Capital, sweetheart! Jack and Meg and I miss you but are so glad you are getting some rest. Don’t forget the lozenges I left you. The writing on this postcard is quite small and may require a magnifying glass (Look in the junk drawer!) if you’re to make out much of what I’ve written. 

It makes me think of the time we stopped at a street vendor when we were here with the kids for our first real “post-toddler” vacation – remember? – when they marveled at everything that was foreign to them instead of hiding behind you or complaining to me.

Jack ran to a kiosk that featured large swaths of text printed on grains of rice and insisted that his one souvenir be “The Gettysburg Address” in miniature. (Mef, still in her imitative phase, demanded the exact same thing, without question.) 

In the hotel room that night, you recited the speech and convinced both kids you had x-ray vision (They didn’t know you had learned it by rote in third grade). Recalling Lincoln’s final line — “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth”— sleepy Jack asked, “What does ‘perish’ mean?” And you told him, “Well, it means ‘die,’ son. Or more like ‘disappear,’ in this case. See, at that time in history, there was a lot of change happening and people were fighting and, when he gave that speech, the president wanted to make sure the union, the country—our country—didn’t disappear.” 

Anyway, when we stopped at the Lincoln Memorial today, our surly Jack said, “Hey, Mom, did Honest Abe perish in here?” All I could say was, “I hope not, honey.”

I really wish you were with us, sweetheart. I’m doing an admirable job keeping spirits high, but I could use some of your x-ray vision to keep me focused. If the lozenges and our luck hold out, you’ll have your voice back by the time we come home! 

xo-Mary

(Written by Geeda Searfoorce)

Well, Son, here we are. It has finally happened. We have each arrived at a milestone in our lives. The earth has revolved around the sun a sufficient number of times since your first breath and now you are sentient enough to know your father is imperfect and weaker than you. What’s more, you’ve taken steps to raise awareness of this fact by verbally asserting your dominance.

Look at the date at the top of this letter. You are five years old right now, and in my forty-year-old hands this No. 10 business letter is crisp and unyellowed. I am planning ahead, for the future I know is coming. I am taking action to soften the blow when it lands because even though I don’t know where we’ll be when it happens—

—in the car on our way home from a soccer match? In the threshold of your cluttered room? Out by the garbage bins, hours past curfew?—

I know deep in my being that you are going to look me in the face and tell me to go fuck myself one day. And lo and behold, today is that day.

Please don’t assume that I am angry because I handed you this letter and promptly walked away. I know I can’t predict the future completely, but I’d like to think future me is not angry. I’d like to think I have more than a passing level of empathy and can understand how you’re probably awash in a mystifying amount of testosterone and having trouble reconciling the small lies and terrible truths that have been mounting over the past few years (Santa isn’t real? Everyone dies? I can’t always get what I want?). Remember: I was your age once. And I didn’t get the option to tell my father to go fuck himself (Grandpa died when I was twelve, speaking of terrible truths). So, I fancy myself somewhat enlightened in this regard. I am not going to ground you or pitch a fit or elicit an apology by means of guilt-geared coercion. I am simply giving you this letter so you can take a deep breath and know the daft and feeble booby you just verbally assaulted had the foresight to plan for this day when you were toddling about, picking your nose, and rubbing it on the dog.

Though others may debate the exact start of our relationship, I think of it as the moment your mother marshaled all of the energy left in her exhausted body and heaved you into the world, small and slippery and covered in goo. She was on hands and knees—have we told you that yet? Childbirth isn’t pretty but it’s the closest thing to pure beauty we humans can witness. Anyway, I joked to the doctor who caught you as you dropped down into gravity, “I guess all the important work of living is done on hands and knees, huh?” He didn’t think it was funny, and neither did your mother or the nurses on duty. Come to think of it, I’m not sure why I said it at all. I guess there was a disproportionate amount of momentousness in the air and I wanted to balance it with a bit of…levity. Not the first time I’ve missed my mark, but the specter of failure never stops me from trying.

So, after that awkward moment passed, you made your grand entrance. And then there came to pass a time I call “The Potted Plant Stage,” during which your mother and I –well, I think we know who did the lion’s share of the work—fed, burped, changed, cleaned, and talked to you with very little reciprocation. I mean, for a long time, babies just kind of do nothing but try to figure out what the devil is going on in this world.

I have a son, I kept telling myself, a son. And then all of a sudden you were walking around and looking us in the eyes and saying brilliant things like “Bah!” and “Dah!” and we just about peed ourselves with joy. I can still see the gaping grin on your face as you teetered towards me on wobbly legs. Or when we built our first Lego tower: I felt like God.

Now you’re five and you start most of your sentences with, “Well, actually, Daddy…” and you take pleasure in correcting me even if all I’ve said is “Good morning, James.” The other day I turned to your mother and asked if there was any study linking the five-year-old brain to the fifteen-year-old brain and she said, “I don’t think understanding brain science is going to help you weather our child’s developmentally appropriate shittiness.” I resolved right then and there to prepare for the future. So, I trundled myself off to McKee’s packaged goods store to buy a bottle of single malt to stash away and I sat down to write this letter.

But I find I don’t have a lot to say. How’s that for a kick in the metaphorical dick? Here I sit, armed with my mighty pen, ready to forefend against my son’s impending barrage of derision, and I can’t imagine what you might need to hear.

I suspect that the older me, out there somewhere, knows enough to tell the younger me, here and now, that words aren’t really what’s called for, that what we need isn’t a dressing down or a don’t-you-dare-talk-to-your-father-like-that or a relentless inquisition into your inner experience, an endeavor to which your mother is better suited anyway. What’s called for is…quiet. So we can nod to one another, each from our own orbits, and turn our faces toward the sun.

I’ll be in the hammock out back. Bring a glass if you want a drink.

(Written by Geeda Searfoorce)