I remember learning to write my name, E-L-I-Z-A-B-E-T-H. Nine letters seemed like a jillion and sometimes I’d even throw in a few more if I felt like it. I remember carefully crafting the Z and holding the pencil in my left hand, though teachers and family members urged me to use my right. My childhood was anything but conventional and putting pen to paper quickly became my outlet. I was a meek and introverted little girl and I dreamt of trading lives with any one of my white-bread classmates. I would’ve done anything to be “normal," so I created fictional characters with average families and told stories of their happy, structured lives. I wrote and illustrated these stories and dreamt of someday publishing them. I also kept journals, made comic books and wrote letters to my Grandmom, who called me her pen pal. I grew up in New York, but she lived in Delran, NJ, so writing letters started out as a fun way to keep in touch.
In the mid-nineties, when hand-written notes were slowly becoming a thing of the past, my Grandmom encouraged my writing and I was eager to impress her. The letters she wrote me were formally structured and grammatically impeccable – even when she was just dropping a quick line. Her handwriting was a work of art in itself; the way she wrote my name made me feel important. It was always a treat to find her carefully calligraphed envelopes in the mailbox, addressed Miss Elizabeth P. Staub, a clear distinction from my mother, who was Ms. Elizabeth A. Staub. My mother and I both are the namesake of my Grandmom. She was called Betty, my mother is Beth and I was simply Elizabeth. Betty was a strong, loving woman, who could make anyone feel special. She was anything but delicate though and all it took was a stone cold glance to let her grandchildren know their place amongst their elders. When I was nine years old, I made the innocent mistake of addressing an envelope to Betty Stanton. The next time I saw her, she made it clear that she was to be addressed as E.R. Stanton and that I was never to call her Betty again (for the record, everyone called her Betty).
Our Grandmom recognized the disorder in our lives and while she wouldn’t dare pity us kids, she made herself a constant figure of stability and love. Her letters brought a sense of nostalgic warmth; a feeling of tradition that was foreign and comforting to me. As she became older, she moved from her big house in Delran to a small condo in Mount Laurel. She packed all of her grand, old Victorian-style furniture into the small living quarters of a 55+ condo. When we would come down to visit from New York, I would sit in the living room on her stiff, white couch and gaze at the old mahogany desk that was tucked into the corner. It was shiny and majestic-looking and she kept all of her crisp stationary in its drawers. I think I was so in awe of that desk because I never really saw her sitting at it. If we were at her house, she was usually cooking or cleaning something. I imagined that was where she sat to read my letters. I pictured her sitting there, writing to me.
In 2007, my Grandmom was told that she needed to have open heart surgery. She blatantly refused, strong-willed woman that she was. She was never afraid of death, in fact, she talked about it often. At times, it even felt like she was challenging her mortality. She became a widow in her forties and never looked at another man again, so I imagined she was at peace with the thought of reuniting with her husband. “Bye Grandmom, see you at Christmas,” we’d say after Thanksgiving. “Well, if I make it that long,” she would usually respond, matter-of-factly. We laugh about it now, but that’s an unsettling thing for a child to hear.
Over the next few months, my family’s mission became to convince Grandmom to go through with the surgery. My mother, successful in the medical field, would try to explain it in terms of her health. Some of us had more selfish reasons – don’t you want to see me get married? Have children? I never spoke to her about the issue. Time was ticking though, and we had to make her choose, so I decided to write her a letter. I re-wrote it over and over, trying to craft the perfect argument. I scribbled out words, tore out pages and questioned how she might perceive my feelings. Would she be angry? Would she cry? Could my letter be the determining factor in her decision? I never mailed it. My Grandmom decided to go through with the surgery, and everything went well. She stayed in the hospital for several days after, where she developed a staph infection and ultimately died. I think some of us felt guilty, like we had forced her to do something she didn’t want to do. It was the most painful loss I have ever felt.
I am no longer a shy, introverted little girl, but writing continues to be my most accessible form of self-expression. It is personal; sometimes so personal that we hide our journals or lock our diaries. We write what we may not have the strength to say out loud. I keep a box of my Grandmom’s old letters and sometimes when I miss her, I read them over. It is because of her that I came to see letter writing as a romantic, timeless form of etiquette. Hand-written letters can be powerful expressions of love, gratitude, sorrow or remorse. They offer a sense of permanence but are in fact heartbreakingly temporal, as that was not the last letter I wrote for my Grandmom never to read. I have notebooks filled with what I wish I could still say, but somehow I think she knows.