{"id":307,"date":"2008-04-02T16:51:28","date_gmt":"2008-04-02T20:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=307"},"modified":"2008-08-02T12:09:32","modified_gmt":"2008-08-02T16:09:32","slug":"markings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=307","title":{"rendered":"Markings"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 2, 2008
\nWednesday<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our Father, who art in heaven, hello to your name. . . . For if you give us a desk, we will give you letters.
\n<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Lynn DeAngelis, b. 1985, at prayer, c. 1989<\/p>\n

\"April<\/p>\n

When Lynn was about five we graduated her from the Fisher-Price plastic table in the family room that was her personal space to a small desk in her bedroom. I chose a Yield House pine piece that was painted a soft Colonial blue, with the writing surface stained a honey brown. It looked nice with the blue and pink flowered wallpaper I’d hung myself the summer I was waiting for her to be born. She used that desk until she was in high school, when she needed a larger piece that could accommodate a computer.\u00c2\u00a0The Yield House piece then became something of a dressing table in our bedroom. I keep perfume bottles and lotions in baskets on the top and fill the drawers with the small sizes of moisturizer and mascara and lip gloss that accumulate with every gift-with-purchase department store cosmetics promotion.<\/p>\n

I happened to give the piece a careful cleaning this morning. I took everything off the top, emptied the drawers, discarded some of the junk that tends to accumulate on and in such handy spots, and went over the whole thing with a fragrant furniture polish. The sun was streaming through the window and as I replaced my basket of body lotions I noticed the markings Lynn’s early academic work had left on the soft wood. I could make out letters: TO ANDR (probably Andrew, a lifelong friend), an L<\/em>, a Y<\/em>, and one of the round-faced figures with a goofy smile that was the hallmark of her artwork in those days.<\/p>\n

This was not the first time I’d seen those marks, but today they struck me as almost impossibly poignant. What happened to my baby<\/em>, I asked myself, also not for the first time. I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately. Lynn graduates from college in just under six weeks, takes possession of her first solo apartment in three. I’ve been getting ready for this event for five years<\/a>, it seems.\u00c2\u00a0Lynn doesn’t live here anymore<\/a>, I said two years ago, and I called both pieces “Turn Around.” Turn around and you’re tiny, turn around and you’re grown.<\/em><\/p>\n

We’ve come a long way from the chubby child whose beginning grasp of the language made the best sense she could of the Lord’s Prayer. We gave her a desk, and she gave us letters, although not very many, because we’ve never been very far apart for very long. She wrote occasionally from summer camp, the envelopes addressed to “Mommy” or “Mommy and Daddy.” Since she went to college we’ve had e-mails and text messages, and both the media in which they are composed and delivered and the ephemeral\u00c2\u00a0nature of most of the information\u00c2\u00a0they contain mean we don’t have a box of letters from Lynn tied with a ribbon. I wish I had more in her hand, but that’s just not the way we communicate now.<\/p>\n

Very likely she and her college friends will maintain contact through e-mails and phone calls and Facebook, and all she’ll ever get in the\u00c2\u00a0metal mailbox inside the front door of her building will be bills and ads.\u00c2\u00a0So I made a promise to myself\u00c2\u00a0to include her on my list of people to send surprise “thinking-of-you” letters to, so that every once in a while, as she marks the days of her life, there will something amid business mail and the junk to make her smile.<\/p>\n

To be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
\nmargaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)<\/em><\/p>\n


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