Writing Letters, Going Deeper
A few weeks ago, I filled a Mason jar with water, for the hydrangeas I snipped from our front yard. The hydrangea bush holds so many flowers it looks like it’s burdened with weight, so I didn’t feel too bad plucking a few to bring inside. I set the Mason jar on the grass, crossed my legs and sat down, and with a pair of gardening scissors, cut them from their stalks. It felt good to sit in the dirt, to touch the flowers, to arrange them in the jar. I’ve been meaning to decorate our house with hydrangeas. Every day I think to do this, but then I get sidetracked or decide there’s something more important to do.
This morning though, I was reading The Last True Poets of the Sea, a young adult novel by Julia Drake. In the scene I read, Violet, the main character, writes to her brother, Sam. The letter takes a long time to write, in fact, it’ll take Violet most of the book to write her brother. Violet has to live for a while before she can write. And live she does. She makes some glorious and passionate mistakes that maybe aren’t mistakes at all, or, if they are, they’re the sort that hold treasure; the sort that are necessary because they help her to emerge.
This is a scary concept for a mother to wrap her head around, and I am grateful to be able to do that, or begin to do that, in the safe and wild place of a story.
I liked that it took Violet time to write to her brother, but I also like that she didn’t stop trying to write him. I thought if I were teaching this book, it would be fun to use this as a writing exercise. I’d call it, “Letters of Three,” and I’d have my students write someone a letter three times, each time going deeper into what it was they are trying to express. We’d annotate Violet’s letters to get ideas — how they started off short, how she relied on humor, how a lot of what she lived didn’t get into her letters, but helped her to write them.
One evening the year we first lived in this house, I stood in front of the hydrangeas on an autumn evening after I’d come home from work. It was clearly dead or dying — the petals were a crispy brown, and their stalks looked like I would snap them in two if I sneezed. I remember telling Jesse, rather frantically, that we had to do something about the hydrangeas. I remember I’d gotten home when the sun was still out (a first, I think) but the light brought me no joy. Its golden glow seeped over and through everything in our house, casting long shadows over everything I looked at.
Harper was on the back porch in a ballet costume and sweatpants, making a house for a fairy she hoped would decide to live there because we’d learned fairies lived in this town. “When she gets here, I will name her Lavender,” she told me.
Hadley was at the dining room table with a stack of Percy Jackson books and a notebook. She was interested in starting a blog about how to pick out a good story. Her first entry went like this: “If you’re going to read a book, first you have to know something about yourself: Who am I? What do I like? These are questions that will help you pick the right story.”
“They’re dying,” I said to Jesse. “Or they’re already dead. Shouldn’t we do something?”
He put a plate of food next to me, but I pushed it away. I was starving, but I had a constant stomachache and I was afraid to eat. I was afraid of everything.
Jesse said he knew about the hydrangeas and thought to do something about them too, but then read that for a certain species you aren’t supposed to tend to them because there is something in their death that the flower needs in order to grow again.
“So we’re supposed to just leave them alone?” I choked out, my voice cracking from a sob.
Hadley stopped writing and looked at me, and here is where I think of Violet and the living she needed to do before she could say what needed to be said. It was living that was messy and heartbreaking and romantic, the way it is in a good story, not sentimental, though there is that too. Parts of Violet had to rest so that other parts could come back.
I wondered then, and I wonder now, what did both of my daughters know about themselves in order to be at home with fairies and Greek gods and goddesses? Or was it that they wanted to know something? Did they want to hold their lives up to what was magic and see if there was anything in common? Did they believe their lives are magic too? And do they now?
The hydrangeas are still green since I brought them inside. Not one petal has fallen. My girls are headed to middle and high school in a few days, and I think we’ll never really know everything about who we are, what we want, or what we can do. I think there is magic in not knowing, and in being willing to stay curious and discovering ourselves anew. I think that’s the real adventure, and I think it’s waiting for us as long as we’re alive.
Try It
This week, write a poem (or try writing letters, if you wish) for someone you would like to express something to, but do it three times, each time writing more, writing deeper, writing truer, than the time before.
Featured Poem
Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s one from Megan Willome we enjoyed:
Don’t Let This Rejection Put a Damper On Your Weekend
(a found poem)
This sucks they killed your poem everyone
loved it until it wasn’t a
go they pivoted I’m sorry
this is so difficult
such good work
so beautiful
you.
—Megan Willome
Photo by Andres Papp. Used with permission. Post by Callie Feyen.
Browse other poetry prompts
If you have ever been in 8th grade, fallen in love, had a best friend, or loved reading, you will love this book. As the mother of an 8th grader, my other genuine hope is that my son will one day have a teacher as gifted as Callie.
—Celena Roldan
- Poetry Prompt: Courage to Follow - July 24, 2023
- Poetry Prompt: Being a Pilgrim and a Martha Stewart Homemaker - July 10, 2023
- Poetry Prompt: Monarch Butterfly’s Wildflower - June 19, 2023
Rick Maxson says
A Letter
Dear Child,
I through my longing, searching, and reading I have come to realize that you were still alive and had been waiting for me. I thought you were gone. So many years had passed by since I’d seen you or thought of you, except in stories, always through the trances leading to our yesterdays. Eventually those faded into the long, drawn folds in the curtains of my responsibilities and became nothing more than dust on that fabric. You were gone, and whenever I did wonder about you, whenever you wandered into my dreams, wherever a memory found some passage into my overly-complicated life, I dismissed you with a smile and a shrug.
As an adult, there was no time for you anymore. I didn’t even entertain the idea that you would remember me. You must have grown too and become engaged in a life different from the one in which I knew you, a life unkind to a child, I know; that must have been my unconscious assumption. I fled from that life of anger and misdirected discipline from a father who had no reference for children. There were no birthday parties, no picnics, no lullabies. How brave of you to endure the years with only a few memories of your own: hours stolen in your room making up stories you acted out with plastic knights and soldiers, cities made of random wooden blocks and the sound of bells on a bicycle pushing dry ice, stacked with creamsickles and drumsticks topped with peanuts, the kind older boy who brought these treats and briefly lifted the sadness in your eyes. You must have felt I abandoned you, I so quickly vanished.
Can you imagine, as I rediscovered you, the swell of emotion that rose in my chest, like a tsunami, and poured from my eyes as it crashed over me? You were alive and still a child. You had fearfully been hiding, waiting for me to protect you all these years when I could barely protect myself. You knew all about me, about my searching, failed aspirations and marriages, my endless building of distractions and poor choices. And you cried for me. You tried to reach me in the labyrinth of dreams, in momentary acts of silliness and, at times, a laughter that overcame who I had become. You had been watching me live, who was convinced you were no longer here.
I know now that you are me. The books and the few sentences that began to change me, changed you. I became less fearful of my own life. I vowed to protect you and you emerged with all the wisdom of a child. The poet Rilke once asked,
Oh, Childhood! What was us going away? Going where? Where?
I read that not too long ago and I realized how I had come to ignore the values of your innocence and unencumbered perception.
It is difficult for me to speak these things. Speech is so fleeting and falters in our trembling voice. So, I am writing this to you and it has taken many years to do so. You deserve more and you shall have it from me, but for now, stay with me and I will protect you and let you grow with me. Welcome home.
With love,
Richie
Callie Feyen says
Oh, how I love that this is a letter. I also love that you wrote to your child-self, which is clearly alive and has been found. Thank you.
Sharmen Oswald says
Dying Letter
I started writing
The Letter to you
For ninety years of living,
Before you got sick.
Urgent, I wrote nonsense words,
Sentences baptized by tears.
You smiled because you knew time was near.
I cried because I knew time was near.
No time for eloquence-
Words stuck in my brain,
Would not release; like the fly in a web,
The harder I tried, the more words stuck.
I climbed in bed with you, read what I had.
Your smile and nod were approval;
I sealed The Letter with a kiss on your forehead.
You died with The Letter.
It was read at your funeral and buried with you.
Words spoken live on after people go.