a sea of letters

(This past spring, we cleaned out the basement in preparation for finishing it.)

I have hundreds of letters between my mother and her mother over years and years. They are a sea of letters.

The letters are all in Latvian. I can only glean some words and so they are a sea of individual letters, floating among others. As if disconnected. I swim through them as if through salty water.

An envelope rose to the top of the big plastic tub. How could I have not seen it before? If I did see it, I don’t remember it. Postmark: Riverside, CA. August 1964. Addressed to Livija Bicolis in East Orange, NJ. I open it. A program from my little brother’s funeral. Three pages typed with Bible verses and poems about angels taken back to God. I imagine that they were given to my mother either before or after the service. My mother, deaf, would not have understood the words of the person standing before her and those gathered around the tiny coffin. How did I not see this envelope sooner?

The letter is written in Latvian to her mother three thousand miles away. Two weeks after burying her youngest son. I can glean some words. “Bobby’s mother couldn’t make it either.” What must that have been like? To lose her child with no one to lean on. Standing in the silence that hangs over her like a cloak that insulates her and isolates her.

A chapter of my mother’s story is hidden in these letters. Even then, I know she must have censored herself.

Over the years, I have made greater and lesser attempts to learn Latvian, if only to know my mother more deeply. It is on my list of goals for this year. A year that is more than half over…