As is the case with most everyone, the Universe likes to teach me lessons. I believe that my particular Universal Agent has come to the conclusion, and rightly so, that I learn lessons best when they are delivered along with a good solid whack to the noggin. Not one for the subtle revelations of gentle meditation, I need the bald monk with a smile and the whacking stick. Bow, thank you, whack, whack. My own path to any sort of enlightenment, including wishful thinking, is a rocky, winding affair lined with big rocky bits, punctuated with bridges that have long since fallen into the chasms they span and hordes of polite, grinning monks armed with shovels, ax handles, peavey poles and the odd pulaski. They, the monks that is, are always happy to see me. I know this because they grin and nudge each other and then spit in their hands as they rub them together. Vigorously.
A friend of mine found a old letter in a book that she bought at a now defunct thrift store in Tacoma. She bought the book containing the letter almost thirty years ago. The letter is dated July 9th, 1917 and it was mailed from Massachusetts to Calcutta, India on the same day. In the letter a young woman is writing to her paramour to tell him that she is having doubts about his request that she have an abortion. Remember, this is 1917. It is a well crafted letter, written in a fine hand. She is sending this to Calcutta because her lover is on his way there to take up a post at an overseas company. Why my friend waited thirty years to mention this is a mystery in and of itself, but she did and eventually I asked if I could look into the matter a bit more, to do a bit of sleuthing. All parties agreed, I set to work.
The envelope has a clear address and the name of the recipient. There is a legible postmark from the town it was sent from. Given the efforts I have made in genealogical research of my own family, I know a thing or two about finding people from the public record. So I spent a good portion of yesterday searching through this and that site on the web, including my own account with Ancestry.com (yeah, its a plug I guess) and by the evening I had an amazing sketch of a life lived across at least four continents. The young woman's sweetheart lived his life as a trader, based in New York, but living more on steamships and in the Orient and Europe than at home on Park Avenue. He became wealthy, travelling first class on the Queen Mary, flying his wife to Paris on TWA in an era when flying meant something, as well as sending her on her almost yearly jaunts to Habana.
His wife was not the young woman who was the author of the letter. I know a fair bit about his wife as well.
While I know a great deal about the events of this man's life and will find out more, the young woman who penned the letter is a mystery. Return addresses were not commonly used at that time and alas, such is the case with this letter. She signed it only using her first name. She may be destined to remain a mystery.
There is an amazing story here, the outline of which is laid out like a map, ready for a journey. The only question is one of research and then writing. I have always wanted the opportunity to write a novel. There are so many possibilities for a fine tale here that even I may have a hard time being mulish enough to ignore it.
Besides, there is my own personal cadre of monks to keep in mind. There they all are, grinning and warming up. One does hate to disappoint. In my heart I knew that if I bleated on about spending 230 minutes a day watching or listening to the news blah-blah-blah my own Universal Agent would eventually shake his (or her) head, wander over to the tool shed and heft one of the many blunt objects that resides within. And then begin to spit in his (or her) hands, preparatory to the whacking.
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