L is for Long Letters

Getting a personal letter in the mail ranks up there with caressing soft baby skin and buying a new purse. I just love, love, love it. The joy of corresponding started when I was quite young, but I can't remember how. I remember being taught in fourth grade or so how to write a proper letter, complete with inside return address, salutation (a word which always reminds me of Charlotte's Web), and one of a myriad appropriate closings to choose from. "Yours truly" or "Sincerely" or "Respectfully yours" were closings which I spent an inordinate amount of time pondering.

My most memorable pen-pal of all times was Lola Steinmetz. She was in her sixties when we lived in Kansas, and she and her husband were faithful members of our little Methodist church. Often they invited us to their home for lunch, which I only remember one other person in the church doing--and it was Marion's sister, Stella Moore. You can tell they grew up with hospitable parents.

But I digress.

Marion and Lola loved each other dearly, saying sweet and kind and polite things to each other. Winking. He always called her "Katrina," and she called him "Butch." They'd tap the other's leg with affection when scooting past into the other room. I remember wondering how it would be to grow old with the same husband and still be so obviously in love. They moved to Charleston later to live with their son, and we moved to Maryland. Marion got cancer that took his voice, his beautiful white hair, and the stout farmer's build he once had. But it did not drain the twinkle from his eyes-- or his memory.

We visited him in his Illinois hospital room on the way back to Kansas one year. Lola brought us in. I'll never forget how tiny and pale Marion looked. Did I gasp from shock? I hope not. What had happened to the big, Santa-like grandpa of a man I had known when I was in Alden? The man who loved to show us the constellations through an enormous telescope? The man who let us pump well water from the old metal handle right into a trusty tin cup that kept it ice cold? What happened to the man whose hearty laughter and keen intellect provided us entire afternoons of joy?

Lola gestured to my dad to come near as she spoke to her Marion.

"Butch, you remember Lyle?"

Before my dad could extend his hand to his dear old friend, Marion's eyes filled with tears. He could barely nod.

"Of course he remembers you, Lyle," Lola said, "He has always loved you and your family. Butch, look. Brenda and the girls came, too." His eyes, big blue pools, fixed upon each of us in turn, dripped with fond remembrance.

Daddy and Mama chatted with him (or with Lola, rather, including Marion with eye contact), thanking them both for treating us so generously while we lived in Kansas. They prayed. I sobbed. Then Daddy cut the visit short. He knew the emotions were awfully hard on everyone in the room. To love so deeply and to lose so quickly? Gut-wrenching.

Marion died a short time later. I think he was about 80.

Lola, however, lived to be 92, if I recall correctly. And for the first two years that I was in college at Seton Hill, she wrote faithfully to me--long letters to fill my journalistic inquiries about life during the Great Depression. Long letters to encourage me to keep the faith in hard times. Long letters to advise a young woman on how to pick the right husband.

I remember two sage pieces of her counsel.

1. "Never marry a man you have to apologize for."
2. "When you marry a good man, your heart won't always flutter when he walks into the room. But it will always beat steadily with love."

Lola always closed her letters the same way. Simply,

Love,
Katrina