Thanks, but…

I’m in a communications group (yes, it’s a pretty vague name, but it works) at our local library and this month and next we’re discussing letter writing and whether it will disappear soon. This is a fascinating topic, and more than a little complex. We couldn’t get our heads around it for days, until we made up our minds to do something instead of just complaining.

We decided to try to write letters ourselves and see what we discovered. To make success more likely, we agreed that notes, as in the note cards one purchases to send a short communication that is less daunting to many than a complete letter, were also permissible. We’re a pretty mild-mannered group, so this solution seemed to fit everyone. Notes are easy. Thanking someone for something they did does not require a lot of effort.

And that is why you have found me here, writing thank you notes to a few people in order to see how this letter-writing experiment works out. I’m thinking it’ll take a few to get the hang of it, get into a rhythm as they say. However, I’m not confident in my ability to complete the activity. At least I can make a list of recipients of my thank-you notes. Here goes:

Thank you, Mrs. Wilson, for a wonderful year in kindergarten. I remember we could see the playground through all the big windows. I remember your homely dog Blackie, who never ever misbehaved. I wonder if he’d b allowed in kindergartens nowadays. Also, thank you for teaching us the colors using construction paper ship on on ring. You never looked bored, but I was, after the first round. I always wondered if you had cut out the sheep of many colors and how old they were. Now I wonder where those sheep on a ring are. I hope nobody threw them away, because I would love to have them as a keepsake. I can’t understand how anybody could teach kindergarten, though. Yawn.

Mrs. Thelma Redmond. Thank you for letting me sit in front, closest to your desk. You helped us learn to read, although it was so easy that I suspect I already knew how, after all the books read to me on laps at home. I’m still not happy that you rejected my effort to learn to write, because that was for second grade. You could have said how awesome it was that I’d learned all by myself, but you didn’t.

Mrs. Catherine (?) Smith, thank you for being nice. That’s all I remember: you were nice. Then I heard you were going to have a baby, but nobody talked about things like that back then.

Miss Shove, you get thanks for being an ugly, crotchety woman who should never have been a teacher. You were mean, so thank you for helping me see that school wasn’t always paradise. I don’t remember your first name, and don’t care.

Mrs. Burke, I’m sorry I don’t recall your first name, but I adored you and fourth grade. I stayed after school every day until five o’clock, when you had to leave. If you hadn’t left, I would have stayed all night to keep you company. You were like a second mother. You helped me believe in school, and that’s rare nowadays.

Mr. Ronald Hubright, thank you for your ears and your silly grin. You encouraged us to explore the globe, to read maps, to be curious about other countries. You taught us some Hawaiian because you had a brother who lived in Hawaii. I loved our maps that had points we could connect and they’d light up. For example, when we located the capital of a country or where a river was in Africa. The boys got to do the electric part, but I got to research things like major imports, important monuments, that stuff. We were a class but also a team, without competing. I think you often wore a silly bow tie, but I still thought you were cool.

Now comes the hard part, which is writing thank-you notes to people outside of school, people who weren’t teachers. A lot of those individuals deserve a reverse thank you, a thanks but no thanks. However, there are so many of those that I’d prefer to skip them. I’d rather write to my father, because I almost never did, seeing’s how we lived in the same house until nearly the end. Now it’s time to thank you as I should have years ago but was either too self-centered, too stupid, or too critical to recognize the good things in my life. Things you put there and I’ve kept with me, will take to the grave (unless I’m cremated).

Let’s see:

Thanks, Dad, for the bookcase you made me. It was, and is, the sturdiest piece of furniture in any place I’ve lived. I think you varnished it, because that’s what you usually did with wood. You seemed to think I need a nook to put my books in. The case wasn’t big, but then I didn’t own a lot of books other than ones with pictures in them. You were encouraging me to be a reader (I already was), to value learning. I was proud of my little bookcase, which you made for me spontaneously, on nights when you weren’t too exhausted from the factory. It stands for your faith in me, even when I messed up on things. I don’t know if I deserved it or you, but I do know you are the kindest person I ever met.

By the way, the bookcase is still in my bedroom, having been painted several times. I have my printer on top of it, and reams of paper, things like that on the two little shelves. It still works beautifully.

Thank you too, Dad, for giving me my own encyclopedia. That was another surprise, and maybe you thought the volumes would go nice in the bookcase. I used those encyclopedias, I certainly did. It was like having a library in my bedroom, and I could look up everything I needed to know. Like the whole history of the Philippines for a social studies report. I got a very high grade and you made me wooden covers out of quality plywood, which you also varnished. I painted a scene on the front of a girl in native dress. The covers are here in the house where I live now, but they’re in the basement. You even drilled holes in them so I could insert file folders. You were so supportive of my learning, you believed in me. In the end, maybe I didn’t deserve all that trust, but I’m hoping this thank-you note will show you that your efforts didn’t go for naught.

I’m thinking about repurposing those covers and will let you know when I decide what I want to do with them.

Dad, I also want to thank you for having incredibly elegant handwriting, showing that ability doesn’t always depend on getting good grades and finishing high school (you didn’t, I know, and it always made me sad). Thank you for teaching me life skills, as they call them now. Back then, they were just things you thought a person - girl or boy, it didn’t matter - should have. They were also things we could do together. Like fishing and hunting, cleaning the fish, taking frozen venison as gifts to your elderly aunts. You had so little, worked so hard, but I saw you as a generous man who cared about elderly family members. Nobody does that any more. Don’t ask me how I know, because it would make you very, very sad.

The life skills (bad term) category is a lot bigger than I can talk about here, in this one short thank-you note, but we can just say you were my best teacher because you wanted me to learn. I watched Mom a lot, too, but she didn’t really teach me. She showed me or let me sit nearby. There’s a difference. Don’t get me wrong; I loved her, but learned very differently from her. She saw me in the moment; you saw a future for me, even as you were aware that you had little time left. Thank you.

I need to bring this session of thank-yous to a close because I’m getting very sad that you’re not here right now, plus the cats need to be fed. There’s just one other thing I want you to know I’m grateful for, although it’s a complete mystery to me why I feel this way:

Dad, thank you for giving me a secret name, which you didn’t intend to be secret and Mom knew it too. Since she’s not here, only you and I know it, or rather, only I do. I did try to decipher the name by consulting with a couple of people, and after many years seem to have solved the puzzle. The name took me across an ocean to a dialect of another language and to things that still boggle my mind and are for another occasion. After those efforts to find a translation, I took the name, closed my hand around it, and devoured it so that now it only lives inside me. Nobody will ask me for it, sadly, but it’s alive and well in me, with you. Danke schön.

Later I found out that in certain Guatemalan each person acquires a secret name at birth. This is a coincidence.

Dad, I’ve added a second secret name to the first one, in recent years. I don’t know why I’m now hiding it, but maybe it just sounds silly. You’re the only person who ever called me with this name, and you used a diminutive that is odd. It was more my name as far as you were concerned than the one I got by baptism. I don’t recall your ever using my real name, although you must have. All you felt for me was in its one or two syllables. They allowed both of us to continue being young and hopeful, confident in the future. But I’m getting off track. Thanks again for everything. I’ll write again when I can.

[A week passes and the communications group is meeting at the library to discuss their assignment of writing letters.]

“How did you do?” Says one member.

“Not bad? Did you write many notes?” Replies another.

“It was a real chore,” complained a third.

“I enjoyed it,” said the first member.

“How did you chose the people for the notes?” One member was interested in specifics.

“I didn’t think, I just thought of a couple people in my family.” Explained somebody.

“Did you write any thank-you notes?” I was afraid somebody would ask me that.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Well, who did you write to?” I chose to ignore the two grammatical errors in that question and answered:

“Oh, to my teachers from Kindergarten to sixth grade, although I left out the one from fifth grade because he was not very nice.”

Note to readers:

Some things are better off being kept secret, I think.