The last letter
5.12.09
Last night I wrote Sean the last letter that I will send to him while he’s a college freshman — the last in the series of postal packages that were my effort all year long to put something fun or cheerful from home in his mailbox.
It felt like a momentous occasion, but I didn’t know what to write. So, what I lacked in profundity I made up for in size: I took a very large piece of paper and used colored markers to say that we’re very proud of what he’s done this year, but more important, we’re very proud of who he is.
I felt like there ought to be a trumpet fanfare or something when I put the letter in the mailbox this morning, but instead, I just thought (as I have thought so many times before this year), that I could walk over to Chad and hand it off to the front-desk people with so much less effort and labor than that letter is going to undergo from the time it enters a mailbox near Chad… and goes through the entire postal system… and then arrives not far from where it started. But I can’t walk over there and do that because I don’t have a key to get past the Chadbourne security system at the door, and I don’t want to put a student in the awkward position of having to decide whether I’m really someone’s mother or not, and therefore whether I should be allowed to slide into the building as s/he enters or leaves legitimately.
So much for the fanfare.
It felt like a momentous occasion, but I didn’t know what to write. So, what I lacked in profundity I made up for in size: I took a very large piece of paper and used colored markers to say that we’re very proud of what he’s done this year, but more important, we’re very proud of who he is.
I felt like there ought to be a trumpet fanfare or something when I put the letter in the mailbox this morning, but instead, I just thought (as I have thought so many times before this year), that I could walk over to Chad and hand it off to the front-desk people with so much less effort and labor than that letter is going to undergo from the time it enters a mailbox near Chad… and goes through the entire postal system… and then arrives not far from where it started. But I can’t walk over there and do that because I don’t have a key to get past the Chadbourne security system at the door, and I don’t want to put a student in the awkward position of having to decide whether I’m really someone’s mother or not, and therefore whether I should be allowed to slide into the building as s/he enters or leaves legitimately.
So much for the fanfare.
