There are two shoeboxes of photos. The origin is unclear - Grandparents house? Childhood home? Photos of pretty girls through the years having fun. Pre-schoolers playing in the snow. Pre-teens riding horses. High school girls as cheerleaders, majorettes, drum majors, beuaty queens, and everything else in between.
At the bottom of a box, hidden under high school letters, Miss Roustabout pagent ribbons and old report cards are 2 letters. Letters from a boy to a girl. A four page letter from a boy that has few words to say in daily life. Letters from 2 towns 30 minutes apart - a couple in love. A couple that will soon get a dog and get married. Five years later, a baby girl is born - another 3 years and along comes a red headed boy. A couple that will get divorced 16 years later.
Finding these letters - finding wedding photos and vacation photos, finding the wedding dress, all feel like an invasion of privacy. Invading a life that existed before mortgages, children, dogs, hunting and fishing got in the way. Invading the life of a couple that is hard to imagine existed over 45 years ago. A couple that never spoke over the last 30 years.
The letters go back into the shoe box, then back into the closet, unread. Unread out of respect of this relationship that neither party would care to discuss or really admit ever existed. Except there is proof - a little girl and a little red headed boy. And two letters.
Monday, October 3, 2011
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