Member-only story
What Happens When You Read Your Parents’ Love Letters?
Lessons for children from their parents’ past
Pandora’s…..I mean, Molly’s….Box
My sisters and I struggled through piles of clothes, boxes and boxes of books, old dishes, pots and pans, a basement full of the detritus from two lives joined for more than 60 years in marriage. Cleaning out the house where we’d lived since 1963 was hard. It hurt.
We packed. We sorted. We threw away old magazines, discolored paperwork, and faded photographs. We hauled carloads of stuff to Goodwill. We gave items to each grandchild and great-grandchild and took what mementos were important to us.
But opening Mother’s special box and reading her love letters was altogether different. It was dusty, tied with an old white satin ribbon, and stashed on the top shelf of her closet. It probably hadn’t been opened since 1952. Why did I feel compelled to open Mother’s box now and read the letters she had kept so long?
Because they were both gone and I missed them. Because I wanted to know about our family history. Because I was curious as to how two such different people could have fallen in love six decades ago. The only way I would get those answers now was to read those letters.
