Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

Posted on by Live & Learn

When I was a little girl, I loved to stand at my grandmother’s elbow while she wrote notes. Her desk was a small secretary, the furniture equivalent of an arranged marriage between a chest of drawers and a glass-fronted bookcase. Carved into the corners of the backboard were a pair of screaming gargoyle-like creatures in bas-relief, their surly beards made from deep black hatch marks. […]

Maybe I never noticed them screaming so far above my head. I wasn’t interested in anything about Mimi’s secretary except for the desk hidden behind a panel that dropped down from a shelf above the drawers. I loved the cubbies in back where Mimi kept stamps, paper clips, a stapler and tape, a ledger of some kind. I loved the stationery, and I loved the ink pens. A hiding place, just for writing!

Written language was a magic trick. My grandmother’s handwriting looked nothing like my mother’s, or my great-grandmother’s, and yet whatever any of them wrote could be understood by anybody who knew how to read. Was there anything more mysterious or more profound? To a child in love with language, the secretary was an altar, its hidden compartment a tabernacle.

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One day when I was 12 or 13, Mimi looked up from her writing. “Someday this will be your desk,” she said to me. “You’re the writer in the family, and someday this will be yours.”

My grandmother lived to be deep into her 90s, so “someday” was a long time coming, and by then I had all but ceased to write anything by hand. Right up until she lost her eyesight, Mimi wrote faithfully to many friends and family members, a habit she had surely developed by living for much of her life during a time and in a place without telephone service. […]

Rebellion against the email leash chaining me to my computer may explain my 2021 New Year’s resolution to write a note, by hand, every day of this year. […]

Between those reminders and the writing itself, I can feel myself slowing down. This is not the kind of writing I can blast through at a messy speed, correcting later. This kind of writing requires a deliberation that little else in my life requires: one thought, one word, one sentence at a time.

In that sense, the letters are as much for me as for their recipients: a thin, scrawled thread connecting us across the miles, linking their grief with my grief, their joy with my joy, their generosity with my thanks. Sometimes this practice reminds me to act on my own generosity, a way to tell people I love or admire that I’m thinking of them. I like to imagine how surprised they will be to find a handwritten letter tucked among the bills and the ads they never glance at for products they will never need. […]

Finding time for anything that matters will always be a challenge, but the notes themselves aren’t hard. All that dread, for years, always putting off and putting off the obligation of a thank-you note or the duty of a condolence letter — why did I waste so much time on dread?

With every renewed effort, I marvel again at how easy it is. How it takes almost nothing to write just a few lines, nothing to fix a stamp in the corner, to walk the letter out to the mailbox and lift the little metal flag to tell the mail carrier to stop at this house. I wish I had known long ago how much pleasure I would take in lifting that little red flag. I wish I’d remembered how much I love the smell of paper and ink and the memory of my grandmother, sitting at this very secretary, the way she said, “You’re the writer in the family” and made it real…

— Margaret Renkl, from “The Nicest New Year’s Resolution I Ever Made” (NY Times, Nov. 22, 2021)

Photo: Margaret Renkl’s writing desk she inherited from her grandmother.Credit…

48 thoughts on “Monday Morning Wake-Up Call”

  3. This whole piece was fantastic…I laughed when I read her definition of a secretary

    “furniture equivalent of an arranged marriage between a chest of drawers and a glass-fronted bookcase”…She elevates what was arguably an oft-used method of communication, to a simple, sacred act.

    2. Hi Mimi 😊

      I just wanted to share with you that by pure luck, I went “back in time” to a couple of old blog posts in…2014! In one of those posts in YOUR blog, I accidentally discovered the close relationship that you had with your father! This has helped me to better understand some of your comments regarding my close relationship with my mother!

      If I’m interpreting correctly, I believe we share the blessing of having a couple of amazing parents! This discovery warms my heart. 💕

      I hope you have a wonderful day!
      Paul

      1. Oh Paul – how lucky am I – that you went back in time, and read this post…Thank you, and thank you for letting me know. Indeed, we are to very very blessed for these relationships we had, and remain captured safely in our hearts. I miss him every day…time just makes it easier to remember without bouts of uncontrollable tears. Thank you Paul..have a terrific day!! You have definitely made my morning!!!

  5. Loved this Dave. Thanks.
    (Warning: long comment ahead! Feel free to skip it! 😊)

    For me this post hits very close to home (in a good way) as my mother (1925–2020) had a secretary style desk (almost exactly like the one described in this post) which now belongs to my brother. It is still located where it has been for decades, sitting on the front porch of what we still call the family “camp” on Lake Champlain in Vermont. “Camp” was built by my maternal grandfather in the 1920s, inherited by my mother, and now by my brother. If you sit at that secretary and turn to your right 90°, you can toss a stone through the long row of windows that face the lake (open the windows first please!) and hit water if you can throw about five or six feet in the Spring when the lake is at its highest, and perhaps 15 feet in the Fall when the lake is low. (The camp is built on concrete pillars and the “basement” under the camp floods every spring by design.) My maternal grandmother told her husband that she wanted to feel like she was “on a boat” when she looked out her front porch windows “at camp”, and that’s exactly what she got. (Fortunately my grandfather was a mechanical engineer, and had the skills to build the camp on pillars!)

    Back to the secretary desk… Some of us of a certain age will remember sitting in class in grammar school learning how to write in the “cursive style”. The exact style (font) of cursive lettering most of us learned was called the “Palmer method”. Most classrooms had a large example of the “Palmer alphabet” pinned to the classroom walls so that we could learn by copying those letters as exactly as we could. (At least the classrooms in my school did.)…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method

    …I mention this because my mother’s secretary still has a bunch of her old handwritten letters inside which are written in “Palmer style”. I am very proud to say that my mother had what was called a “perfect Palmer”… Meaning that she succeeded in copying the chart of letters on the classroom wall EXACTLY! Needless to say, my mother’s handwriting was beautiful, and I cherish all of the beautiful notes and letters that she wrote to me over the years.

    So the end of the story is that my Mom had a “perfect Palmer”, and her secretary is still in immaculate condition. My brother (who I am very close to) had better take very good care of that desk! I live only 8 miles away from the camp now, visit there often, and I am watching to make sure that the desk, and the handwritten letters inside, are well cared for!

    To those of you who made it this far: Thanks for letting me share. I’m proud of my grandparents, and particularly proud of my mother. (I have written about her before. She was precious beyond words.)

      1. I would think we had about the same amount, give or take. I shovelled twice because I prefer not having to put out my back – mind you, it was super fluffy and light – and I figure it was probably 4-6 inches the first time and maybe 3-ish the second? Hard to tell. I’m not wont to mesure this stuff.

  7. I have always wanted to learn the art of calligraphy. I’ve had a couple of false starts (attempts to learn). I suspect it’s unlikely to ever happen. Too many other things on my bucket list 🙂

    I can’t even write in cursive anymore because I found it too slow when trying to take notes in school. I will probably have to settle for my (usually legible) basic printing when using a pen.

  8. Aw, this is sweet reading. My husband used to write post-Christmas “winter notes” to his friends, but now he’s enamored of penning & sending more frequent post cards — and it’s a win-win thing, indeed.

  9. What a beautiful read.

    When I was in Ireland on my solo writer’s retreat, the cottage I rented had a writing desk that once belonged to the owner’s grandfather. It was big with lots of cubby holes and hidden compartments and seeped in history. I loved it.

    And how interesting – on this morning’s blog at Dare Boldly, I wrote about creating a writing corner for myself — I created ‘my desk’ from two maple doors that came out of the home my daughter and her partner renovated. I love the charm of the old wood and though not as old as Margaret’s inherited desk, I love to make up stories about the people who opened and closed those doors that are now my desk and all the things that happened to them behind closed doors.

      1. Maybe I’ll pull out my “how to do calligraphy” books again (unlikely). There are now YouTube videos that teach how to do fancy handwriting on a tablet or iPad. I would far prefer to learn how to use a fountain pen!

      2. Practice! When we were kids in elementary school, I remember we had a writing book to practice in. It was called the MacLean Method of Writing. In those days, teachers still taught writing. Now they don’t even teach kids how to hold a pencil.

  11. Dave, this is the 1st post of yours I read for the longest time (still on the mend since Dec. 19th’ severe bronchitis), and it already won my FAVOURITE OF THE YEAR 2024 prize . I underline and subscribe to every word, and I know it’s true because I still write very much ‘real’ mail. It’s taking me longer, I need to think and put it ‘right’…. it seems a civil ‘right and necessity’ to me. I love keeping the cards, etc, I receive and taking them out in moments of need, curiosity, sadness, and joy. To re-read, re-evaluate, rejoice, cry ….
    She is fast becoming my best friend in writings ✍️.
    All the best to you and yours and 1001x thanks for your valuable inputs and your online friendship.
    Kiki

  13. Oh how I love this! I still delight in sending handwritten notes…I feel instantly connected with the recipient. And I know full well the joy Renkl describes in finding that handwritten note tucked in amongst the bills and fliers. Always an unexpected treat.

  14. I love this share 🙂 Interestingly, yesterday my dear hubby remembered my request to pick up a pack of postage stamps at the grocery store…this way if cell service and landline ever go down for an extended period of time I can write to my sisters…

  15. Today, in my email one of the sisters said I’m sending something Sweet…the next email was a readable image of a card I sent her in 1990…concerning weather conditions causing canceled visit to family in their area, due to their weather. Our weather was frigid & our snow was dry and our little darling toddler was disappointed in the type of snow since it wasn’t pack-able & she couldn’t make a Frosty the snowman 🙂 (or should I say Daddy couldn’t, though she was a willing helper) the message continue in sweet memories…I’ve had others who have kept written encouragements and told me how special its been to them and some have said what I said to them was heart touching….so I encourage everyone to remember to spread kindness, support and encouragement…

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