Letters From Home

"Dear Mom and Dad, We have ran away but just for the day. Don’t worry about us, cause we took the mycitracin. Love, your kids. “Attention Farmer family……there will be a show in 10 minutes starring your daughters Kristin, Kathryn, and Emily and your son, Bud….please take your seats on the couch. You will be served grilled cheese sandwiches or a bean and cheese taco in a minute. Please give your order to the waitress when she comes by. No tips necessary since this is your birthday.” They say that a picture paints a thousand words, but a note found unexpectedly many years after the fact, opens a floodgate of memories. These memories paint a more vivid picture and tell a greater story than mere words could ever bring to life. Running away, putting on a show, finding a girlfriend, entertaining a parent, showing concern, giving thanks, pouring out a heart, finding your way, or giving advice; a note tells the story of the strength of a family. You may have to read between the lines, but the image is there. The power of these notes is that the image that is created will live forever.
There are letters and notes of so many varieties. I remember Martin getting the big plastic bags from the dry cleaning and filling the bags with gas from the jet used for the space heaters. He would insert a message into the “balloon” and let it go off into the blue. Several times he received responses from people that eventually found the note in the balloons. I never thought about it at the time, but now I am wondering how we did not have some sort of explosion from the escaping gas as Martin would inflate the dry cleaning bags. Another form of literature that we collected over time is the “Cousin’s Club Express”. My kids, along with all of the cousins that were around their age, would each submit articles about what was happening in their families. Shannon got Homecoming Queen, Rambo the hamster died, Camp Can Do has a record number of participants, Michael is part Indian and has predicted the weather correctly for 6 days in a row. If you needed help with your parents or friends you could write to “Dear Cousin”. Subscriptions were available to all of the family members and “The Cousin’s Club Express” went out every month. I know all families have their own personal stash of sweet notes and letters. Being married to a builder, we packed up and moved quite often and each time we moved, the task we enjoyed the most was bringing out the box that held all of our correspondences. The box contained letters from our kids, notes left around the house, cards made for us by our children on special occasions, and all of the love letters James sent to me when I went off to college. After a move we never actually unpacked this box, so it should have been one of those items that would have been very easy to throw onto the moving truck. However, the lure of what was inside was always too strong to resist, and this box consistently tacked on hours to our moves. Each of us would get caught up in the memories and the stories. After James died, I spent days poring over the letters that he wrote to me when I went away to college and left him in Jacksonville. Little did I know how valuable these words would become to me. The letters reassured me of his love, made me smile, and are now a treasure chest for my kids. What a wonderful way for my grandchildren to get to know their grandfather. The letters paint such a vivid picture of this beautiful man. Then there was the pleasure of rediscovering the notes that we concocted for Father’s Day. We would send James on a scavenger hunt around town. The kids would deliver the first note to him with breakfast on the morning of Father’s Day. The note would contain instructions for retrieving his father’s day gift. Go get in your pickup and drive to Buckner Park. Find the note before it gets dark. No need to push us on the merry go round. Another note still needs to be found. James would find the note on the merry go round and read the next set of instructions. Now drive to the lake and search the barge. The clue left there is not very large. We would all pile back into the truck and off we would go to the barge to look for a note that would contain directions to the next clue. The search would continue and I realize that we were sent on an exploration of places that meant the most to my kids. As I look back now, I think these must have been the greatest father’s day gifts ever. It wasn’t the present that was finally revealed at the end of the chase that was so magnificent, but it was all of us in the truck watching James’ reactions to the clues that was the true gift. These notes, those times, will be forever priceless to me and my kids. These notes show my kids the art of giving from the heart. These notes remind them of what it was like to be a child adored by their father. These notes help keep James alive.
Notes and letters serve many missions. Growing up with seven brothers, it was always enlightening to just sit back and soak up the art of dating. There never seemed to be a lack of females hanging around our house. My brother Bill, in particular seemed to be a “chick magnet”. After reading some of his notes, I am not really sure why. One note that we still discuss from time to time at Sunday lunch is the “scratch and send” note. It went something like this: Dear Mary Jane, I like you very much. Would you like to go steady? If the answer is yes, that is good! If the answer is no, then please scratch out your name and put in Margo’s name and pass it on to her. Always, Bill. Now, I know that Bill has a killer smile. And, I am aware that all of my brothers have movie star good looks (especially to teenage girls). But I cannot understand how the “scratch and send” note could not tarnish his image just a little. This is a note that proved that the pen is a mighty sword when it comes to love (especially teenage girls). The more notes of this nature that were sent, the more abundant the candidates (especially teenage girls)! Sometimes love just does not make sense.
I love reading the letters my older siblings would send home from college. They would all start with the obligatory, Hi all. Hope you are all fine. I am really studying hard. Unfailingly there would be a mention of their love life away from home. Mom, I had a date with Chuck! Now I am completely snowed over three boys: Chuck, Doyle, and Michael! What do I do? or I am winding up my physics lab and need to study for my calculus exam, but I have to tell you that I finally got a date with that beautiful girl I was telling you about! I just hope that it is not the only date I have with her! I really like the girl from last week, but I have had my eye on this one forever! or I am still in love but I don’t guess there is anything I can do about it. Any suggestions? or Dear Mom, I know you really liked the girl I brought home last weekend, but don’t get your hopes up. I just don’t think she is going to work out. There is an unending line of letters and each seems to get around to the dilemmas of dating. When I analyze this situation, I see that my parents were completely immersed in all phases of falling in love. There were the “circle yes or no” kids in elementary school, kids in middle school with hormones raging, kids in high school where the dating game was in full force, and kids in college where weekly they were hearing many names with which they could not even put a face. For a parent, there could not have been enough right answers. There could not have been enough consolation. There could not have been enough talks. There could not have been more worry. And yet the letters, from the ones written in elementary school to the ones sent home from college, show that we knew the answers would be there and that we were not concerned about the worry we caused. We were not apprehensive about broken hearts or meeting “the one”. Finding the love of our life was just another adventure to write about, and if we followed the example set before us, all would be good.
The letters sent from college did not solely address the love lives of the Swanson clan. There were the ones that had several variations on this note. I’m at work right now. But I just wanted to warn you that I might get a D in Government. I made a 65 on my test. I’ve decided to quit studying because I do just as well when I don’t study. Grades were often mentioned in the letters, but I could not find one letter to my parents that did not ask about the “little ones left at home”. Please tell Mary Claire, Bill, Martin, Lucy, Randy, Pat, Grace, and Sallie hi for me. Tell Bill and Martin to beat Brenham in football…..remember that last game when they beat us 72 to nothing? Sometimes money was the theme. Thanks for the $50 check but I am sending it back. I am not trying to be dramatic or Harry Hero, but I would really feel bad about taking money this close to Christmas with all the little ones still at home. I would rather you spend this money on them. The topics were endless and varied, but from the time Cookie left for Austin until Sallie was packed and gone to the University there was a unifying theme that all of us seemed to pick as a topic. Dear Dad and Mom, There are many things that I know you probably want, but none of those things are what I really want to give to you. I want to give to you what is way down deep in my heart. I want you to know the special, wonderful feelings for you that are always inside me, yet there are no words that can express them. Just the other day when I was leaving for school I looked back just in time to see you walking back into the house. I wanted so much to go back to kiss you goodbye and thank you over and over not only for the wonderful time I had over the holiday, but for being such ideal parents. There are only 10 other people in the whole world who are as lucky as I am. This theme was found in letters from all eleven children. I never knew that the others wrote letters expressing gratitude for our family and upbringing until just in the last few years. How amazing that they were all so much alike. From James’s love letters, my kid’s cards and notes, experiencing my brothers and sisters growing up years, leaving home, finding that special someone; to the Cousin’s Club Express, the written word is there for our family to enjoy for an eternity. Cell phones and email have cut down on some of this correspondence, but in reality, not much has changed. Even as the next generation of our family reads through these notes, they can still readily identify with the feelings and emotions brought forth with each story. Times change, but life stays the same. Papa’s letter to my older brothers shows that advice from forty five years ago is timeless:

10/9/63
Instructions On How To Pick A Wife

Dear Cookie, Hunty, and Jimmie,
Pick one close to the church: I don’t say that she has to be a Catholic…but she surely needs to be one that will eventually make a good Catholic because the Church helps to hold a family together and she is the one that will have to turn the family toward God and the Catholic church is a way to do this.
Pick one that won’t be selfish (Now or later):
A wife has to go through years and years of hard work, self denials, anxieties and constant pressures, so you have to project a long way forward and see if one is really good enough to have this kind of love and compassion ten or twenty years from now and keep it during the times the going gets toughest and times when it looks as if others always get the breaks because these things are true no matter what level of income or living you prove capable of providing.
Pick one that you love:
Since you will have to go through so much of the same self denials, so many of the same anxieties and pressures and so much of the same hard work (except to a much, much lesser degree than your wife) it will be necessary for you to have a lot of this love, too. It will have to be enduring in order for you to get over the “low spots” yourself.
Pick one that will help you:
If a wife is great enough to spread her love if and when there are kids and still have enough left over to keep you with the feeling that you still have the same amount of love from her that you had before it was necessary to spread it evenly to so many or to others in the family then you will receive a lot of help in anything that you do just from this alone.
Pick one of which you will always be proud:
Besides the fact that you feel so good when you hear others just time and time again tell you and other people all about the wonderful mother of your children, there is another thing that this pride does for me. Any time I get “down in the dumps” I can go anywhere with your mother and if there are other people about, I can, just by looking around and seeing her against others (and also by stopping to count to 11 at the same time) get out of the “dumps” and realize what a lucky man I am and realize something else, too….That I did such a good job of picking a wife and mother that I can be justified in taking the pleasure of writing this “guide” to you.

This letter can be used through the ages and the words will live forever. As will my crumpled, worn copy of a letter from James. Dear Lucy, I don’t speak many words but I want you to know that I love you more than anything in the world. Even though you are away at college and I am here, you are still with me and always will be. I hope you know that I am with you, too. You will always be my punkin. Love, James