Archive
10/11/11 - (2)
Bequeathments
All this immemorial morning, to the far end of afternoon, I and my thirty-seven-year-old daughter, Trilogy, Flowering with her first child, my first grandchild, Have sat in my editor's office, side by side, She at the computer's keyboard, I reciting, As we transcribe each word, comma, hyphen, question mark, Every paragraph's initial capital and last sentence's period, Of seven of the 130 letters my mother penned to my father, During her four-year courtship with him, Beginning October 22, 1934, when she was nineteen, Concluding March 30, 1938, Two weeks before their wedding, in her parents' apartment, At 1050 North Shore Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, The address where most of the letters were composed.
And as we progressed, Charlotte's exuberant voice Began lifting off her tasteful, colorful stationery, Into a flowing script connecting my daughter and me With that ebullient, precocious Northwestern U. student, Who would graduate in 1935, at twenty . . . The voice and, then, that sorority beauty queen herself, Who, at twenty-three, would say good-bye to her family, Move to St. Louis, where, in a mere three years, She would bring me into being, bequeath me her passions, Destine me to further her adoration for literature, By filling my soul with her musical poetic sensibility. When we finished, what Trilogy and I realized, palpably, Was that we'd begun preserving the love My mother was bequeathing a great-grandchild she'd never see.
10/11/11 - (2)
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