Ruthie’s Letter
Early in 1957, my mother wrote a letter to her friend Ruthie. She told Ruthie she was getting married in May. In late March, Ruthie wrote back, an eight-page letter brimming with excitement and curiosity, not to mention good penmanship. Five or so years ago, I was doing some tidying around the family home and came upon Ruthie’s letter in an old enameled breadbox packed with family keepsakes: fading snapshots, First Holy Communion certificates, Mass cards, etc. Also in the breadbox were pages and pages of recipes—typed up neatly by my mother, a graduate of the Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School—for creating dishes such as “South Carolina Shrimp Perlo,” “Chicken Chambery with White Grapes,” and “Sauce Robert.” She titled her recipe collection “Cooking for Two.”
Ruthie’s letter to my mother was written on lovely, high-quality stationery, the kind you don’t see anymore. She begins: “I can’t express how happy I was to hear from you again and all the good news too—it is just wonderful! I hope you won’t mind me asking you all these questions but it’s only because I’m interested in your happiness. Where in Jersey are you going to live? Where did you meet your boyfriend? Is he from Jersey? What does he do? Are you going to work after you’re married? Did you get all your furniture?”
I paused over that last question, as I’m pausing over it again now. I’m not sure when, exactly, my parents’ furniture arrived, but I was sitting on one of their dining room chairs when I first read Ruthie’s letter. I’m sitting on that same chair as I write this, five years later.
The letter continues. Ruthie reports suffering a severe case of bronchitis that lasted all winter. She wasn’t able to “finish fall cleaning and here it is time for spring cleaning.” Her husband, Al, “had something wrong with his nose and then he got a piece of steel in his eye and just recently he got insulation in his eye and got an abscess. We got a car right before Christmas and it’s a beauty but the payments are rather high and it will be for three years. Right after that we had trouble with our cesspool, oil burner, television, and washing machine. The television still isn’t fixed—we sure miss it but I went to Bingo this week and won twenty dollars so we’re having that fixed. The whole works went on the washing machine and Al and his friends are trying to fix it but meanwhile I’m scrubbing on the old washboard. Al had his heart set on getting a bigger boat but they want so much money and we couldn’t go any deeper into debt. It all is very discouraging but we have been going out a little more than we used to and that helps to keep up your morale.” It’s impossible for me not to sympathize with Ruthie, especially about the lack of money and problems with the cesspool.
Her letter closes: “I’m going for a Civil Service test on Saturday. Although I won’t know the results until September, I hope I pass and can get assigned close to home. My brother is still about the same—no better, no worse—but it sure breaks our hearts. I’m glad you and I are friends. I do hope that our friendship can continue on the basis of just ourselves. You are one of the few, if not the only, who I was introduced to through any of Al’s friends or Harold that I can say I would have picked for a friend. Guess I’ll be signing off for now.”
When I finished reading Ruthie’s letter that first time, I phoned my mother to tell her about it. She was eighty-five then, still a couple years away from her death. Whenever I asked her about the “good old days,” she always responded with the same words: “I don’t want to talk about that. I want to look forward, not back.” Even so, she did remember her old friend Ruthie, but said they fell out of touch a long time ago. I asked if she had any memories of Ruthie that she’d like to share. She said: “Ruthie and Al got a divorce.” I asked if she would like to have the letter, I could send it to her. She paused to think it over. “No, that’s okay. You can throw it out and anything else like that. All those people are dead now.” She proceeded to tell me about a TV news report she was following, something about a military blimp that broke loose and was wreaking havoc across Pennsylvania.
After we hung up, I went back and read Ruthie’s letter again. There was a postscript I had overlooked the first time. “By the way,” Ruthie adds, “the name of ‘O’Grady’ sure sounds nice.” I was touched by a feeling of congeniality toward this woman I had no memory of ever meeting. Perhaps we did meet, but I would have been an infant. In any case, I wished—and still wish—it were possible for me to write her a letter and tell her how happy I am to have read what she wrote to my mother all those years ago. Who writes letters anymore? Who writes back? And what assurance is there of any delivery?
I guess this little account will have to serve. I’ll just sign it with love, put it in the original envelope along with Ruthie’s letter, and return it all to the old breadbox.
©John P. O’Grady
Originally appeared in The Mountain Eagle on August 21, 2020
