Thank you Alma Daws
In June of 1977, my Mom and I took a trip to Halls, Tennessee. I was four years old and had been to Halls as an infant, but my mom’s parents had died just after I was born and she had little reason to visit in the interim. Her hands were full in Kansas City with a new infant darkened by postpartum depression that was magnified by the loss of both of her parents. She was trying to figure out how to work from home and have a life all while grieving and figuring out what to do with this new person in tow. I can’t imagine how difficult that period was for her. I remember her depression but couldn’t really understand all the causes. That trip, however, was the start of many happy summers for us in Halls. The little West Tennesse town became our regular destination whenever I was out of school and that trip marked a turning point in my mother’s demeanor.
One of the things that we did on that trip in 1977 was to visit Mrs. Alma Daws. Mrs. Daws had been my Mom’s fifth-grade teacher and was obviously an influence on her life. That visit was not something I remember talking about with my Mom, although, I remembered the trip. I was too young to understand any of it other than the obligation to my Mom. However, A few weeks ago, I was going through the family genealogy folder my Mom had given me twenty-odd years ago. In it, I found a photocopy of a letter and poem that Mrs. Daws had written to my Mom just after our visit. It’s an amazing find for me at this particular moment in my own life. It is about me as a four-year-old to my Mom as a thirty-year-old from an 80-year-old teacher to her pupil. To me, as a fifty-year-old, it’s about the time I have left and the legacy and the people and friendships that have slipped away in the flood of years that seem to overwhelm everything in life. It’s about those silent golden threads that bind us to the planet and a life that break and tangle and intertwine with others’ broken and tangled threads and that binds us all together in a tangled and broken golden mess that we call life.
When was the last time that you wrote a letter? I mean an actual, get-out-the-paper-and-pen type letter? I used to consider it a sacred duty. But I’ve also spent the last thirty years proselytizing the ease and convenience of capital T Technology. I have let slip that duty. I think we all have. Email and social media have usurped our obligations with speed and convenience. But there’s just something special about a letter, magical almost. It’s an artifact and a remembrance. A lesson through time. A manifestation of a golden tread. There are reasons that we find bundles of them in estate sales and we continue to judge people posthumously based solely on correspondence. Letters are art in its purest form. A thing, we make, that is an artifact of our thoughts. What can be more valuable than that?
Today’s post is a thank you to Mrs. Alma Daws of Halls, Tennessee. Thank you for taking the time to write a quick note to my Mom 46 years ago. It meant a lot to my Mom then, and it means a lot to me today. I intend to cherish this letter and poem for the rest of my life. I don’t know what Mrs Daws taught in school but she’s reached out through the years and taught me the value of a good old-fashioned letter. She’s reminded me that I need to start making the art that really matters again and that there are at least twenty people who spring to mind that I meant to write and didn’t. The time to change that is today.
