Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Love Letters

Today we were out at Leo's as we are most days, sorting and cleaning. We wear paint masks because the dust is so incredible. By the end of a few hours, the white cotton of the paint masks is gray.

I had worked today on sweeping and mopping and polishing the furniture in the two rooms that are cleared. It was a great sense of achievement to see how nice things looked. I had also gone through the contents of an old roll top desk, which meant discarding a bunch of old magazines, bills, and propaganda newsletters that Leo had subscribed to. Then I found a beautiful stationery box that contained letters, all in a tidy cursive handwriting. I wanted to take a break from work to read them to see if there was a love interest, but I set it aside and worked on.

A few hours into our work, we heard a car horn on the yard. It was two of mom's long-time friends from high school. Marilee, who is crazy funny, and Marilyn, who was diagnosed with cancer two weeks ago. Marilyn had been feeling blue so Marilee "kidnapped" her and took her to see us at Leo's. Both had talked with mom earlier this morning and knew we'd be there.

Marilee had a cooler with a six pack of Busch Light and we stood out in the sunshine and had a beer together. We talked about the work and then I mentioned the box of letters. I went into the house and got them and read the letter at the top aloud to them. When I finished, we were all mesmerized. They were from a woman named Eileen from Madison who talked about the weather, her church, her work doing EKGs at the hospital, and their next date.

None of us knew Leo had dated anyone, so we were all surprised. He was never married, a die hard bachelor, and a loner. Who could have guessed? Marilyn read the next letter aloud and we all interjected comments "she gained weight?" "she has kids?" "where do they meet?" I then dug through the box of letters and found the first one in the box, dated May 1980. The previous two were from October 1981. We read that one and in it she stated that it was hard to belive they had been dating a year.

We all wanted to hear more, but the sun was going down and the weather was getting cold, so we called it a day. I caught mom trying to sneak the box of letters home so she could read them all, but I stopped her. We decided to have girls days and read them together. Savor them one letter at a time.

Now I need to find the letters from 1979 so we can start at the beginning.

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