Artifacts

Leif and I met and became friends in Mississippi when I was six and she was seven. Then I went into the hospital with rheumatic fever, and when I came out nine months later, our families had moved. We found each other again in 1973, and we've held on since then. In the years before email, we wrote letters to each other and sent postcards, pictures, and slides. Today I got a large package of my letters that Leif had saved. I haven't finished reading through them, but they're full of people and places I had forgotten. Here's an example.


July 1, 1983

Edrie is 78, a practical woman who tends her plants and likes instant coffee and refrigerator biscuits. Her family is a brawling loud sprawl of beer-swilling unemployed men, women with bad teeth, mean kids, and broken-down cars. She has played dominoes, gone hunting, raised horses, and killed snakes with a gun. She has never known the likes of me, nor I of her. She wanted to know why I want this PhD. I said I think the first order of people is those who create; the second order, those who help others enjoy what has been created. She says she thinks the first order is those who get appetizers, and the second, those who just eat steak and potatoes. After I stopped laughing she added, "No, the first order are those who know they have a right to be here and don't have to prove it to anyone or win anybody's approval." I think she meant I should strive for that. But I don't think I'll ever get there.