Letters To My Mother

  Letters To My Mother

  Rebecca Heath

  Published: 2008

  Tag(s): "May December" "University of Washington" romance sailing "gifted coed" professor bittersweet

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  Website: Letters To My Mother

  Prologue

  I inherited my mother’s home in the Oakland, California hills several years after the firestorm of 1991. A shifting wind spared the house, a modest 1950s ranch-style with a stunning view of San Francisco Bay, and when the fire was over, Mother’s was the only one still standing in a two-block radius of blackened rubble.

  In retrospect, it might have been better if the house had burned down; at least the insurance company would have built her a new one. By 1991, a penchant for Caribbean cruises and flights to Hong Kong had exhausted Mother's modest inheritance, and the reality of living on a widow's pension that sufficed to buy designer clothes or maintain the house, but not both, was sinking in. She opted for Versace, and by the time I took possession of the property, the wooden deck was falling off, the paint was peeling and the roof leaked. My real estate agent said the buyers would tear the place down; only the land was valuable.

  I set to work getting the house ready for sale. One afternoon, between trips to the dumpster, I discovered several boxes full of old letters underneath the bed in my parents’ room. I found two more cartons in the closet under a pile of straw hats, then four more in the bedroom that was once mine, and then … In short, my mother had saved all the letters she’d ever received, hundreds of letters, perhaps thousands of letters, in a correspondence going back more than 60 years.

  I was astounded. Why hadn’t I seen these boxes before? And why had my mother – who was neither sentimental nor a hoarder – saved the letters? I dragged the boxes to the living room and sat down on the floor to examine them. Most of the senders I couldn’t identify, and these letters I threw in the trash, but when I recognized a familiar name, I couldn’t resist the temptation to read a few lines.

  In a letter three decades old, a high school friend of Mother’s wrote that her daughter was coming home to have a baby while her husband served in Vietnam. Mother must have been happy to read Vicki’s news, but it brought tears to my eyes because I knew the Viet Kong shot down her son-in-law’s plane and he never saw his little boy.

  Another friend wrote to say a mammogram had detected a tumor in her breast, but since the growth was small – thank goodness – the doctor expected her to recover fully. He was wrong.

  Granddad wrote that my grandmother was ill, then that she was worse, and finally that she was dead.

  Dead, all dead. I don’t know why I opened those letters; reading them was like walking through a graveyard.

  But there were happier ones. A small shoebox contained the letters Daddy sent to my mother in 1935, during their engagement; although the handwriting was familiar, I didn’t recognize the urbane man I knew as my father in the author’s awkward prose. In what were probably the first love letters he’d ever written, the young naval officer described his ship and his comrades; he thanked Mother for finding an apartment. And here and there, almost with embarrassment, he inserted a timid word of affection.

  The last box was sealed with heavy tape; I got a knife from the kitchen and slit it open. To my amazement, the letters inside were mine – letters in a childish scrawl beginning invariably “How are you? I am fine,” sent from various summer camps, and others mailed from a boarding school in Spain. At the bottom, tied with a faded blue ribbon, lay a stack of letters I wrote from college, and in reading them I rediscovered myself.

  Were those letters really mine or was it someone else’s correspondence in my mother’s box? Was I the girl who wrote about the Paraguayan professor that invited her to drink wine and listen to folk music in his apartment? I had felt so sophisticated telling this story. (True, I’d omitted a few details: we weren’t alone, and after the first sip of Chablis I was seized with a coughing fit).

  Was it I who described a joyous day of sailing on Puget Sound with salt spray on my face and the wind whipping my hair? Was I the one who’d fallen head over heels in love?

  With the passage of time, marriage, work and children, I scarcely recognized the light-hearted girl of 40 years before in the sober adult I had become.

  I looked at the handwriting; it was little changed. And the return address, yes, it was the residence hall where I lived, but the author, was it really me? I read a few more of the letters. They were full of joy, exuberant, and bubbling with life. And they were mine.

  Chapter 1

  Blaine Hall, Room B102

  University of Washington, Seattle

  Sept. 11, 1956

  Dear Mother and Daddy,

  Classes began yesterday and I'm so happy to be back in school. This

  quarter is going to be fantastic! I'm taking the anthropology of Oceania

  (the professor has a perpetual blob of mucous or ? between his lips

  and when he opens his mouth it stretches like a rubber band – gross!),

  primate and human evolution, 20th century Spanish literature and

  modern European history.

  Do you remember my friend Norma Berrigan, the graduate student

  in Romance languages? We had dinner together Sunday at a barbecue

  place on “the Ave” and she asked if I’d like to go with her next

  summer to a Quaker work camp in Mexico. We’re planning to stop by

  the American Friends Service Committee office tomorrow to get the

  details; Norma says it costs $125 for two months, plus transportation.

  What do you think??

  This quarter should be relatively easy, so I’ve decided to look for

  a part-time job to help defray the expenses. Yesterday I went to the

  campus employment office and they referred me to a professor in the

  biochemistry department who’s looking for a student to type some

  manuscripts in Spanish. I feel ok about the Spanish part, but the

  subject matter is a bit daunting. I don’t think I have the quali-

  fications, but we’ll see. I have an interview with him this

  afternoon and must confess I’m a little apprehensive…

  I hurried down a path leading south from the library to my interview with Dr. Rosenau, nervously curling and uncurling the appointment card in my coat pocket. In front of the Health Sciences Building I stopped, unrolled the card, read “L.D. Rosenau, 425 HSB, 3 pm” for perhaps the tenth time, drew a deep breath, and climbed the stairs. As I exited the elevator on the fourth floor, I looked at my watch and realized I‘d arrived five minutes too early. I lingered in the hall trying to kill time; I read the instructions on a fire-extinguisher cabinet, paused for a drink at a water fountain, sauntered past a couple of laboratories, and stopped to glance at the cars-for-sale and apartments-to-rent notices on a bulletin board.

  Toward the end of the corridor a radio was playing and the sound of music grew louder as I continued down the hall searching for room 425. At the end of one wing, I reached an office with “L.D. Rosenau” written on a nameplate beside the door. I glanced at the appointment card and then at the glass panel behind which the frenzy of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain was reaching its climax. I knocked several times without receiving an answer, then once again with more force. The music stopped abruptly and a voice summoned me to come in. When I entered, a tall man in a lab
oratory coat stood up and extended his hand.

  “Miss Collins? I’m David Rosenau. Won’t you have a seat?” I took the chair he offered and surveyed my prospective employer. He was in his late forties, I guessed, with a leonine mane of wavy, black hair, going gray at the temples, a mouth outlined by heavy creases, unruly eyebrows, and a complexion so dark that, despite his last name, I thought at first he might be Indian. In repose, Dr. Rosenau’s deeply-set eyes gave him an aloof, brooding quality, an aging Heathcliff I decided, but his smile dispelled this impression. He was the most handsome man I had ever met.

  The mental picture I’d formed of Dr. Rosenau before the interview bore no resemblance to reality. I was expecting someone balding and paunchy, an old man with stained fingernails who reeked of sulfuric acid, and his actual appearance caught me by surprise; my carefully rehearsed opening speech deserted me, and I sat down without a word, painfully aware how young and unsophisticated I must seem to him. My loafers, sweater and wool skirt (girls didn’t wear pants in those days) were incredibly gauche. Why hadn’t I worn nylon stockings and high heels? Why hadn’t I stopped by the ladies’ room to put on fresh lipstick and fix my hair? Why hadn’t I dabbed some perfume behind my ear? I never thought for a moment Dr. Rosenau would deign to notice a girl of my insignificance, but he was so handsome that being hopeful was almost a reflex. My gaze wandered to his left hand, which was ringless. I felt foolish wondering if he was married, and looked away quickly, hoping he hadn’t observed my curiosity.

  “I must apologize for keeping you waiting. Were you knocking long?” Dr. Rosenau’s English, though fluent, was accented. His words had a slight British crispness, mixed with a hint of something else. German? Not guttural enough. Spanish? That seemed the most likely possibility, considering the typing job, but he pronounced “Miss” as in English, not “Mees.” French? Maybe.

  “No, but if you hadn’t heard me, I was planning to wait for the soft part, the oboe passage where the bird sings and the church bells chime.”

  Dr. Rosenau’s right eyebrow lifted into an arch. “You know the piece?”

  “I have a recording of Bald Mountain at home.”

  “Toscanini?”

  “Stokowski.”

  “Oh yes. The 1954 version. And where is ‘home’?”

  Was the 1954 version good or bad? I was afraid he’d ask me something technical about the recording and decided to abandon Mussorgsky’s composition as a topic of conversation. “Clearfield, Utah,” I replied, in answer to his question. Realizing he couldn’t possibly have heard of Clearfield, I added, “It’s a small town between Salt Lake and Ogden.”

  Dr. Rosenau asked if I spoke Spanish. “¿Habla Ud. castellano?” I recognized his accent at once; the “ll” pronounced as “j” gave him away.

  I answered in Spanish, explaining I’d attended a boarding school in Spain for almost three years. “You’re from Argentina, aren’t you?” I asked, a bit triumphantly.

  Dr. Rosenau smiled. “Yes, I was born there at any rate. I’m afraid my accent betrays me no matter what language I’m speaking. It’s been almost 30 years since I lived in Argentina and I daresay I’ve been speaking English far longer than you, but I seem unable to shed one accent or acquire the other. I can’t identify yours, though. Are you originally from Utah?”

  “I’m from no place, really. Because my father’s in the navy, I’ve lived everywhere from Hawaii to the Middle East. That’s how I happened to learn Spanish. The Navy transferred Daddy to Turkey in 1949; there weren’t enough dependents in Ankara for the American government to provide teachers for the children, so my parents decided to send me to a boarding school in Spain.”

  “Lay or religious?”

  “Religious. The nuns from Sagrado Corazon ran the school; it was like a convent – matins in the morning, vespers in the evening and lots of catechism in between.”

  “Are you Catholic?”

  It was a strange question for a job interview. “No, I’m …” I wanted to tell him I wasn’t at all religious, but that seemed too strong and hardly the thing to say under the circumstances. “No, I’m not.”

  Dr. Rosenau switched to English. “You made good use of the opportunity; your Spanish is excellent. What’s the Navy doing in Utah, may I ask? Is there a Great Salt Lake Fleet?”

  He’s trying to put me at ease, I thought. I picked nervously at my right thumbnail, loosened a strip of cuticle, and yanked it off across the base. “My father’s a supply officer; that is, he’s involved with provisioning the Navy, as opposed to a line officer, who commands ships. The facility in Clearfield is the Navy’s largest inland depot in the United States.” My answer sounded wooden, even to me, and I wished I could relax. I glanced down and saw with dismay that blood was oozing from the base of my nail and starting to drip on my skirt. When Dr. Rosenau swiveled toward the bookcase behind him to get a notepad, I seized the opportunity to lick the blood off my thumb, whisking my hand back to my lap just as he turned around.

  Dr. Rosenau opened a drawer to his left, took out a box of tissues and placed it on the desk in front of me. I felt my face turn red, but he continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “What are you studying here at Washington?”

  “Thank you … for the kleenex, I mean. I’m … I’m majoring in anthropology.” I was prepared for the patronizing response this answer usually elicits from students of the physical and biological sciences, but Dr. Rosenau surprised me.

  “Anthropology’s a fascinating field! I considered becoming an anthropologist myself. Of course, you’re probably used to hearing people say that; they have such romantic notions of stumbling on some pharaoh’s tomb or discovering the missing link. When I was a teenager, I spent one summer with a tribe of primitive jungle Indians in Peru. It was an extraordinary experience for a youngster and after that I thought seriously about studying anthropology at university.”

  “What tribe were you living with?”

  “The Shipibo. Have you heard of them?”

  “Are they the Indians who live along the Ucayali River? They must have been headhunters in those days!” As soon as I uttered the remark, I realized it was an unflattering commentary on his age, but Dr. Rosenau only smiled.

  “Yes, they’re the ones. I was living in a settlement a few hours’ hike away from the town of Pucallpa. By the late 20’s the missionaries had put a stop to headhunting, officially at least, but one old fellow did show me a few grisly family heirlooms. Now I suspect they’re wearing blue jeans and carrying transistor radios.”

  I subtracted “late twenties” from 1956; thirty years, give or take a couple, and if he was seventeen or eighteen then … “What changed your mind, about anthropology, I mean?”

  “My father was a doctor, and of course he encouraged my interest in science. We used to spend a great deal of time together netting butterflies, popping vipers into formaldehyde and mucking around in caves photographing bats. Papa was an indefatigable naturalist, so some of his enthusiasm was bound to rub off on me. What made you choose anthropology?”

  I hated questions like that. No one really cares why you major in something. They’re just conversation fillers, bits of trivia to grease the wheels of social intercourse. I envied the French girl in my Social Anthropology class who, when asked the same question, had purred, “Because it’s the study of men; what could be more interesting to a woman?” I could never have thought of anything so clever and, even if I had, such a comment would have sounded ludicrous coming from me. Dr. Rosenau looked at me intently, as though truly interested in my answer. All right, I decided, I’ll let him have it.

  “A grad student once told me people major in anthropology because they’ve read Gods, Graves and Scholars, Coming of Age in Samoa, or Patterns of Culture. In my case it was Patterns of Culture; I picked up the paperback edition in a drugstore three years ago. That was my first encounter with the idea of cultural relativity. Like everyone, I assumed our way of doing things is the way of doing things and for me it was an epiphany to read abou
t people functioning with entirely different sets of postulates and theorems. When I read that book I’m not even sure I knew what anthropologists do, but I knew I wanted to be one. It’s fascinating to consider how the concept of mental illness varies from culture to culture or how the proliferation of western technology alters role expectations.” I was warming up to my subject and hurtled on, oblivious of the expression on Dr. Rosenau’s face.

  “For example, I was thinking this morning how in primitive societies the aged frequently enjoy high prestige because the skills they’ve taken a lifetime to acquire have survival value to their group, like knowing the habits of the animals they hunt, or how to navigate in the ocean using wave patterns and star position. But in our society knowledge is changing so rapidly that what older people know, at least on a technological level, becomes obsolete overnight, and their low status reflects this knowledge gap. When you combine this situation with a system in which government payments have replaced the traditional …” I was suddenly aware Dr. Rosenau hadn’t taken his eyes off me once and he was clearly trying to repress a smile. I blushed in embarrassment. “I don’t think I explained it very well,” I stammered. “I guess I just get carried away by ideas.”

  Dr. Rosenau regarded me for a moment with a serious expression, and then grinned. “I understand you perfectly. I get excited about ideas myself, but,” he leaned forward and lowered his voice to a whisper, “I don’t tell anyone.”

  I met his gaze and we smiled at each other.

  “Do you plan to teach on a university level?”

  “At this point I’m not sure. I’m only a junior, so graduate school still seems a long way off. I can’t picture myself as a professor but, to be honest, there isn’t much else you can do with a degree in anthropology except teach. On the other hand, I hate to think of earning a Ph.D. just so I can hang a diploma on the wall and then having to search for a job as a secretary.”