Dear Dad

I’ve been decluttering, digging through the memories that live in our attic, mostly in a big black chest my mother gave me years ago. For decades, I shoved things inside, promising I’d get back to them one day. Now, with more time on my hands and no boys in the house, I’ve opened it up.

Mostly, there are letters. Undated apologies from my middle son (“Mom, I’m sorry I yelled at DJ about whose team is in a better division”), the scrawl of my younger sister, barely in high school, confessing her unrequited loves and fitness routines.

As a child, I wrote to unknown parties, begged the mailman to drop envelopes in a mailbox one town over, to a house that might hold a girl like me. I stuffed my fair share of bottles with letters I hoped would float overseas, create a connection from another shore. (Most were launched in Sparkle Lake, but a girl can dream.)

I sent postcards to friends and teachers from the many places we camped in the summers—Myrtle Beach, California, Zion. At home, I’d see them taped to walls or thumbtacked to bulletin boards and feel flushed with the memory of writing, of telling.

In middle school, I passed notes, full of longing (“Who do you like better? Answer A or B”). High school nights were spent recording letters in journals, tucked in the back of my closet, hidden from prying eyes. Older, I hunted for the blue spiral where I hid my secrets. It was gone.

The big black chest’s contents now litter the floor. I think about mailing some letters back to their writers: college roommates, friends living abroad, then with babies, now grandmothers.

When my oldest boy was born, Mom sent emails about quilts she was making (“one for the wall and one for the crib”) and how to settle Evan to sleep (“Don’t let him cry, Maribeth. I don’t believe in that. Hold him and rock him, he just wants his mother.”)

I find my emails to her (“Mom, it’s called the Ferber Method. You’re supposed to let them cry!”) and my responses to ones I assume she sent, chats we once had (“The Sopranos, right? Amazing!”).

As the boys grew older, my letters became cards from them. Together, we’d cut hearts, color with markers, and they’d write in baby scribbles, which I’d translate (“Love you Nangy, Happy Birthday, Poppa”). There are years of no letters—just newspaper clippings, school photos, book reports.

Buried at the bottom of the chest is a plain, white three-ringed binder. Inside are the letters I wrote when Mom became sick, so confused she could no longer speak on the phone. Her words wouldn’t come out right.

The letters are sweet. DJ wants to play football. Evan thinks he’s a man. Then the salutation shifts.

“Dear Dad,” it says, and like that, she’s gone once again.

I close the binder, close the chest. Pull the door softly behind me.