Postcard Stories

Venice, Italy, July 1983 ~ Nearly 30 years ago, I achieved my childhood dream of visiting Venice, that astonishing city built on water.  I sent this circular postcard to my co-managers at Food Front Co-op, and was able to reclaim it upon my return. Reading it brings back the wondrous trip I took through Europe, on the back of a motorcycle driven by my boyfriend:

"Venice is magical, unreal - but muggy, insanely crowded.  We avoided the usual tourist sites, swam in the Adriatic, wandered aimlessly through narrow alleys and over canals, slept in the home of an old Venetian woman who spoke no English and treated us like honored guests."

Whenever I travel, I thoroughly enjoy sending postcards to friends and family, describing sights and recounting adventures.  It gives me an excuse to sit at an outdoor cafe with a cup of coffee and watch the world go by while writing to friends far away.  

My parents traveled widely, but their most unusual trip took them by ship to Antarctica, where Mom wrote, "Boy, it's cold here.  Icebergs everywhere.  The Drake Passage was very rough, people falling all over and lots of sea-sickness.  We've been on Zodiacs every day - the scenery is fantastic."






Postcards depicting beautiful scenery are lovely to receive, like this view of Goat Mountain and Mount Shuksan in the North Cascades of Washington state.  It was mailed to Food Front Co-op by a friend who has a creative way with words.

Two of the most unusual postcards in my collection  were sent from Tortilla Flats, Arizona, to my children by my parents.  These cards are covered with a copper relief and crimped around the back to enclose the writing surface.  They were mailed almost exactly 15 years ago, in May of 1998.




My high school friend Alice Weisser, formerly Alice Wysell, has been making her own holiday postcards for several years, showcasing her talent as an artist and adding to my collection of favorites.

In the summer of 1983, Kevin McGillivray (my first husband) traveled around Europe on a motorcycle, ending up in his ancestral home of Scotland, where he wrote:

"I am home again!  That is my feeling as I gaze across the deep dark lochs and the wild verdancy of the glens to the green and rocky mountains that dominate the landscape.  Purple heather alternates with swashes of fern in open, grassy fields, divided by the brown peat-colored brooks that feed the lochs, surrounded by leafy trees of evergreen.  All things are embraced by the softly passing mists that seem so much a part of the landscape.  I'm glad I am here.  Cheers, my lass, Kevin."

Art postcards are fun to buy and keep as mementos of a trip.  This sculpture of Il Bacchino (Little Bacchus) was a highlight of the Giardino di Boboli in Firenze (Florence, Italy).  He seems to say, "No, don't touch my feast!  I'm just taking a little rest here with my attack tortoise."
 
A chance to be poetic, pithy, or even a bit zany - postcards encourage creativity.  The writer only gets a small amount of space, so words must be chosen wisely.  As with haiku poetry and tweets, less can be more.

Keep those stories coming.

Remembering Emmett

Emmett Chase was unforgettable ~

A special education teacher who excelled in his work with autistic students, he changed his name (twice!), learned to read and speak the almost forgotten Native American language called chinuk wawa, and listed the locations of Monkey Puzzle trees he spotted around Portland (mementos of the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition).  When we were married in 2005, he presented me with a bunch of dandelions, roots and dirt attached, with the promise that he would always be in my life like those prolific weeds, ineradicable.

Sadly, that was not to be.  Just before our fourth anniversary, Emmett was diagnosed with brain cancer.  Determined to beat "those alien bastards,"  he received 55 radiation treatments and agreed to an experimental drug with a potential side effect of brain hemmorhage, because the doctor said it was his best chance.  Despite his optimism and the best efforts of his doctors, Emmett died at home on December 23, 2009.  One of my most treasured possessions is the letter he wrote to me during the last year of his life.

Our wedding day, March 12, 2005

We met in the summer of 2003.  An accomplished square dancer and former president of River City Dancers, Emmett invited me to attend square dance lessons that fall, and I surprised myself by saying yes.  Over the course of the next few months, I learned that this smart, funny, romantic man shared my love for literature and the theater.  After he recited T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" from memory on our first date, I knew I was hopelessly hooked.

We were married on March 12, 2005, the day before my 50th birthday. We bought a house and blended our families: my 14-year-old twins, his 14-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son.  A wonderful storyteller, Emmett loved to fabricate bedtime stories for his son Alec and daughter Laura.  He often did the same for me, but I rarely heard the end of his stories because his melodious voice lulled me to sleep.

When Emmett and I first met and we were both at work, he emailed me dozens of poems by various authors and on many topics.  During our marriage, his special occasion cards and daily notes were sweet, like this Valentine's Day card: "I would propose to you if we weren't already married."

Near Mt. St. Helens, fall 2006

Our short time together was rich with experience: travels to Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas and Lake Chelan, WA.  Time at home with our four children and three cats in the yard.  Gardening together - those amazing giant sunflowers we took pictures with, using a tall ladder!  The terrific community of square dancers that Emmett welcomed me into.  Swing dance lessons, East and West Coast.  Accompanying him to Camp Cody on Mt. Hood, where he dug in the dirt with the Oregon Archaeological Society while I hiked around the lake, happy to be there with him.

In July 2009, Emmett sat down to write letters to his children, his siblings, and me.  He typed them, because his handwriting had gotten hard to read.  When he finished the letters, he placed them in long plain envelopes with our names written in Sharpie. We weren't to read them until he was gone.

This is a portion of my letter:

My wonderful wife, friend, helpmeet, support, lover, companion:

Here, in the closing days of a hot July, I take pen in hand to write what I trust are not anywhere near my final words and thoughts at this time.  In a few weeks I will experience a risky therapy and I take great comfort in knowing that you will be there with me, come what may. 

At our wedding in the park, as you will recall, I declared my undying love for you to be like unto a dandelion, a stubborn prevalent weed, ineradicable, ubiquitous, impossible to vanquish.  So it remains.  Let me into your life, and here I stay.  Your symbol for me at that moment was a flower, the sweet rose, beauty beyond compare.  My symbol was a little goofy, but apt, don't you think?  Only fate will remove this Dandy Lion from you now.

For the times I have distressed you, I am dreadfully sorry.  When I pleased you, made you laugh, comforted you, inspired you in turn, surprised or delighted you with a song or a poem - for these moments I shall carry the memories always.  I know you will do the same.  Did I mention that I love you immeasurably?  Get used to it.

Losing Emmett was the hardest trial I've ever faced, but I'm grateful to have known and loved this wise, unforgettable man.  I shall carry the memories always, and keep his letter close to my heart.

And yes, dandelions are taking over my yard.

Amy "J.T." Bodian ~ Forever Friends

Amy Bodian at Vassar Lake, 1976

Amy Bodian was the most exuberant, creative and zany person I've ever known.  She called herself and everyone else J.T. She talked of mysterious ideas, like the third eye, and played her flute for me within the weeping branches of a willow tree.  She was my best friend and confidante through high school and college, and she was there with my family when I graduated from Vassar in 1976.

Although our lives kept us geographically apart after college, we carried on a 20-year correspondence full of silly rhymes, great affection, and heady philosophy about men and careers and life.  She visited me in Portland in 1990, just after my twins were born, and was so taken by the kiwi vines growing in my backyard that her subsequent letters were all addressed to Kiwitown, USA.

Amy died in 1993 of lung cancer, having never smoked.  I am so grateful to have her letters to remind me of the wonderful friend that she was.

Exuberant ~ that's the word for Bodian.  Whether she was riding her bike through drainage ditches, imagining her next art project or espousing Eastern spirituality, she was passionate about it.  She was open to new ideas, free spirited, the kind of friend who made me think. We had been writing our letters in rhyme for years when she mentioned in a card: I'm doing a new kind of psychic channeling that when delivered is delivered in rhyme - yes I know - it's been our secret all this time.

A talented artist who worked in many mediums, Amy adorned her letters and envelopes with the most expressive beings drawn with just a few lines.  Art was her passion: she attended art school in San Francisco and Ann Arbor, Michigan, but she often questioned whether a career in art was right for her.  I am very confused about my art and the act of creation, she wrote.  I want to experience the power of the spiritual through the channel of the subconscious.  I want to experience it in my own creating, and along these lines work with children and adults.

In her search for a fulfilling vocation, she taught yoga, healing and meditation, created a "sheet project" involving heiroglyphics and ancient hymns, participated in a project for peace in the Middle East to calm that raging beast.  With workshops relating to love, I affirm new signs for that hawk to be made a dove.  In later letters, she wrote with excitement about art therapy with the terminally ill, and she pursued many creative ventures, including plans for an illustrated children's book.

She was wise in ways that still astonish me.  In the late '70s she wrote: Often it is the love I feel for you that gives me such exhilaration in my letters.  I do not think with my brain, nor with my heart.  I absorb with something that is a little bit of both, but neither.  Much greater, much wiser, much more exacting and accountable.  I call it soul, I feel it as power, some know it as spirit.


Throughout the decades of our letter writing, Bodian always made me feel good about myself.  Shortly after I got hired by The Charlotte Observer to take phoned-in obituaries, she wrote:

I must tell you, you yourself are turning into a wiz kid giant, and I expect within the near future you will possess with your winning charm an esteemed and highly acclaimed job working for the New York Times or perhaps even the more radical Village Voice.  Those are the qualities my dearest J as in T does possess.

She often expressed how much our friendship meant to her, addressing me as My Darling J.T. or Dearest Watson or even:

With strange foreshadowing, Bodian once wrote:

It's 1983 / Sing along with me / We're friends till the end / Till death do us part / And far beyond the end to the start. 

Surely Bodian never knew that her time on earth would be so short.  Her wise and beautiful letters help keep her unique spirit alive.  These words from one of her cards say it all:

This season let us rejoice in what we have earned and learned.  Let us celebrate abundance of love and mate, friendship and fine estate.  For you my thoughts and wishes are never late.  Always in your heart am I alive, as one J.T. to another can only realize.
               I love you dearly,
                           Amy

Handwritten Treasures

Letters are a legacy of love to the ones we leave behind.

In a short talk given in 2007, Lakshmi Pratury lamented the disappearing art of letter writing, and especially of letters written by hand.  She talks of the notes her father wrote to her when he was dying: "the paper that touched his hand is in mine, and I feel connected ..." she says.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lakshmi_pratury_on_letter_writing.html

Lakshmi concedes that email has a valid role in modern life, but hopes that letter writing will never be completely replaced by electronic communication.  She values things with a personal touch, such as the journal her father wrote for and about her, books that have been autographed by their authors, and heartfelt personal letters.  I couldn't agree more!


I love the variety of handwriting in my collection of letters.  My friend Amy Bodian showed her zest for life in her exuberant penmanship and decorative borders.

I still possess the hand-painted tapestry she refers to in this letter, "for prayers or whispering cares."   I keep it on my bedside table, a tangible memory of my dear friend.  More about Amy (J.T.) Bodian in tomorrow's post!





Letters from my Papa, my mother's father Joseph Rogovoy, show the style of cursive writing that my grandparents and parents learned in school - looping, connected letters at a serious slant.  Such penmanship seems undervalued in a world where its use is rarely required any more.

Although my dad almost always typed his letters to me, he signed them by hand - with a confident "Dad" that somehow evokes his entire dimpled grin.


My late husband Emmett Chase made great use of email to send me dozens of poems and messages, and I treasure those communications from our courting days.  But Emmett was also fond of handwritten cards and notes, and he gave me many during our marriage.  It's wonderful to hold in my hands a card that he chose, to read the words that he wrote.  Those simple handwritten words help sustain Emmett's support in my life.

I know there's a science to analyzing people's handwriting, and I don't profess to know a thing about it.  I find the fact that every individual has a unique way of writing fascinating, just as I find it amazing that everyone's fingerprints are unique.
Most of all, I love knowing that someone has taken up a pen, thought about me, and made their mark on the page.

Envelope Art

Dear Reader:

Does it seem that envelopes bearing letters have become bland and boring, subjected to dozens of rules and regulations by the postal service?

When my friends and I were in grade school in the '60s, envelopes became an extension of the letter itself, a place to scribble all kinds of wisdom and advice.

Occasionally, a friend would write, "Dear Mr. Postman, Why are you reading this when you should be delivering mail?"  A better question might be, who has time to deliver the mail when there's so much to read?

In my collection of letters, fabulously decorated envelopes are the icing on the cake, sometimes as sweet as the letters themselves.  In 1977, when these letters were mailed to me in Charlotte, NC, an artistic friend used envelopes as canvas, without fear that the postman would not deliver his epistles.

My friend Amy Bodian, who called everyone JT, often decorated both her letters and envelopes with animated figures drawn with just a few lines.

Sometimes friends just seem to get carried away with colors, or with stamps and stickers.

Whatever the inspiration, envelope art is in its own category - disposable, yes, but collectible too.  Like a phonographic record album cover, it's a hint of what's to come.  Envelope art invites us to enter and read, to engage and enjoy.  It's the cherry on top.

Do you have envelopes that you've saved because they're beautiful or intriguing or special?  Please consider sharing them with me and my readers.  Email me your favorites at lwatson(at)q.com.

Dear Old Dick

Ellie and Dick, circa 1953

My dad, Dick Watson, was quick with a quip, gifted with words and the life of the party.  An award-winning advertising copywriter, he rode his motorcycle to work in Manhattan from our home on Long Island, NY.  As his first child and only daughter, I got the best of his affection and adoration, although he was not a demonstrative man.

Dad died in 2004, in his sleep, as he always said he wanted to.  I miss his playfulness with language, referring to Stark as Stork Street, or calling every natural food store The Food Fern; the way his friends were given nicknames like The Plaid or Weird Peter.  When I was a child, he called me Snooper or Babbo with Bleach, with great affection.  I'm sure my love of words is a direct inheritance from his genes.

I was pleased to find among my letters a handful that Dad wrote to me when I was an undergraduate at Vassar College in the mid '70s.  Typed on Henderson Advertising Agency stationary, they were posted from Greenville, South Carolina to my Terrace Apartment (#30) on the Vassar campus in Poughkeepsie, NY.  Unlike his jovial in-person demeanor, his letters are straightforward and full of valuable history, like this from April 24, 1976:

Dear Laurie,

     I sent a check to Vassar last week -- so don't worry, you'll be able to graduate.  We're all looking forward to the big day -- May 16th.

    Enclosed is the check for $25 you requested -- for your final bills and expenses.  I am also enclosing a dividend check you received in the mail last week -- for 33 cents.  Don't spend it all in one place.     

     Everything at home is fine.  Papa seems to be recovering from his operation very well -- and expects to be well-enough to attend your graduation.  We went to Andy Effron's bar mitzvah last night, which was very nice.  Tonight is the party, at Perone's, which should be a lot of fun.

     We'll see you on the 16th.  Good luck on your final exams.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

An endearing element of the letters is the inclusion of love from the cats (Tiger and Spookie) in his closure, as well as news of their doings.  I had to laugh when I read this story in a letter from Jan. 31, 1976:

The cats are both fine.  Spookie caught and ate a bird the other day, and left its remains in the garage.  Mommie wouldn't touch it -- so, after a few days, I scooped it up and threw it away.

After a few days??  Dad never was a fan of unpleasant tasks.

Grandpa Dick and Nana Ellie with Alex and Emily, 1990

But he certainly took on the role of Grandpa Dick with passion, lavishing love on his first grandchildren, my twins, Alex and Emily.  Trips to Mexico and Hawaii, excursions to Seattle and California, and a luxury cruise to Alaska became part of our shared family history, thanks to Dad's generosity.  Those travels together are precious memories.


None of us can forget Dad's gusto for life: a race car driver who gave up racing but never stopped loving fast cars; a Republican who loved Bob Dylan and rock and roll; a world traveler whose most unusual journey took him to Antarctica.  Dad's big dimpled smile was infectious, his sense of humor silly but irresistible.

I miss you, Dad.  Thanks for those letters, and everything.