Letters: The wondrous time machine I found on my bookcase

But what I learned about my past from those old letters
wasn’t always flattering

Stored away

Depending on where I lived at the time, these two boxes of letters sat on my bookcase, in a drawer, or maybe in a basement cubbyhole.

Over more than 45 years, they’d accompanied me on countless moves spanning three careers, several girlfriends, and three wives, with the latter two categories almost never overlapping. I could have re-read the letters whenever I wanted but never did because I never really had a reason.

Until last month, when I rekindled a friendship that had been on hiatus for 40 years.

As a result, I decided to seek out the letters my friend and I had exchanged frequently back then. While our letters to each other were not problematic, I can’t say the same for all the others I found. More on that below.

Old letters are a way of time-travelling

When I re-read several of the letters in those boxes, I literally (and I mean in the literal sense of “literally”) felt like I had travelled back through time. I found myself saying things like, “I should answer this,” or “Man, I really screwed up there and badly need to apologize,” or even, “Hey, great! Glad you’re seeing someone interesting!” To me, the past and the present were all one.

I had to shake my head a bit and realize that the person writing me about what courses they were taking at university or whom they were dating is now retired and probably can’t even remember those courses or who those people were. Yet the letters made it all feel so immediate, so real, even 45 years later.

Re-reading the letters from the friend I mentioned above, I felt as if we were both in our early 20s again, having conversations people of that age would typically have. We discussed social events, concerts, people we were seeing, trips, and what former classmates were up to. But there was also a lot of mundane daily stuff, which was simply another way of connecting at a very personal level.

We also touched on current events, including politics and people in the news at that time, which gave the letters, taken as a whole, a sense of minor historical narrative.

Many letters were written over more than one day: “I’m going to bed now—I’ll finish this tomorrow.” Then, it picked up again a line or two later: “Hi, I’m back.” Imagine including that in an e-mail today—the recipient would question your sanity, to say the least.

Personal letters were a lifeline

For those under 40 who may be reading this, I know it’s hard to believe, but people used to write letters to keep abreast of events in each other’s lives.

In my case, I exchanged letters with all sorts of friends—girlfriends, former girlfriends, girls I wished were my girlfriend at the time, non-romantic female friends, and my long-time male friends, including one of my high school basketball teammates.

I even exchanged some letters with former teachers. Clearly, I’ve always loved to write.

Bear in mind that long-distance calls were horrendously expensive in those days. I’ve got more than one letter saying, “I’d love to call, but I just don’t have the money right now.” So letters it was.

And letters were an opportunity to use one’s imagination. In my “time machine,” there are letters written on pieces of beer cartons, little shopping bags, and all sizes and qualities of paper. There are short notes and multi-page missives. It’s quite a varied collection.

Some letters say, “Hey, glad to hear from you!” while others include big, bold one-sentence statements saying, “WHY ARE YOU WRITING ME?” Of course, those were from some of my close buddies at the time who were still living in Winnipeg after I’d moved to Edmonton. They were kidding. Mostly.

Not everyone wrote letters, and not everyone saved them

Not everyone wrote letters, of course, but it appears that I had enough friends who were happy to engage me this way after I’d moved to a different city. My “time machine” includes many dozens of letters, and I know there were many more that were written and received beyond the years represented in those boxes. Alas, they’ve been lost to time, relocation, and divorce.

And not everyone who wrote letters kept them the way I have, so my “time machine” is likely a bit of a rarity, one I’ve enjoyed engaging with, but one that has opened my eyes to some things all these years later, as it turns out.

We all have lists of past misdeeds

Our subconscious minds tend to sanitize our past. Some people are exceptions, of course, but most of us don’t want to dwell on or even remember something unkind we said or did years before. However, we shouldn’t be surprised that we all have a list of such misdeeds, whether we are aware of them or not.

For those with no concrete record of the past, it’s easy to pretend this list doesn’t exist, even if the people hurt by the misdeeds would beg to differ. After all, our feelings linger long after we forget the details. But for those of us with a “time machine” to remind us of things we regret—even decades later—that list is not so easy to set aside.

Not all the letters were bleak

Not to say that those letters I still have are all rife with hurt and misdeed—far from it.

Most are a reminder of the many relationships and activities I enjoyed as a young person (there are some letters I may want to burn on account of that, come to think of it). For these parts of my past, the “time machine” has served to remind me of perspectives I’ve forgotten and to put events in their proper chronological order so I can better understand decisions I made back then.

But for relationships that include sentences such as “I thought we were friends” or “You’ll never know how mad I was at your rudeness,” those are enough to nauseate me today for showing that kind of disrespect, particularly in romantic relationships, whatever my reasons then.

I’m not that person now and haven’t been for a very long time. I know I can’t judge my 20-year-old self based on who I’ve become at 66. But if there was ever a moment I wanted a real time machine so I could go back and make those (and many other) situations right, it’s now, as I re-live them.

The letters are a written record of the whole true picture

As troubling as learning unflattering things about my past has been, some good has come out of my time travels.

One is that there may still be time in some of those relationships to mend fences, as it were, even if I risk being rebuffed. We’ll see.

But beyond that, I’ve gained something from discovering a more honest, unsanitized rendering of myself and my life’s journey. No more fooling myself into thinking I was different from what I was. My subconscious can’t protect me any longer because I’ve now discovered written proof of the truth.

Coming face-to-face with my flaws, errors, and unkindness helps me better understand who I’ve become and the work I’ve had to put in after taking a good, hard look in the mirror over time.

Moreover, it’s helped me appreciate how supportive the people around me have been in my quest to become a better person, although I’ll leave it to others to judge whether I’ve accomplished that.

I have all sorts of photos from those days 45 years ago, but the letters I re-discovered in that “time machine” are better than photos. Sure, the images capture a snippet of time, an expression of a feeling at the precise moment the shutter clicked.

But my “time machine” in the form of saved letters has allowed me to hear my friends and partners, at the ages they were at the time, speaking to me once again.

Even if it wasn’t always something I wanted to hear.