Blog 355 – 07.27.2016
(Excerpt from the book: Emily – The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Along)

Episode 27

Back in the nineteen fifties when I was in elementary school we were taught to write letters. In our world of laptops and smart phones with email and texting, letter writing is a lost art but speed and brevity have sacrificed a certain civility and poetry that only survives in novels, movies, and in the memories of those born in the fifties and before.

We were taught to begin our correspondences with “Dear” recipient and close them with “Yours truly” sender. It is unusual to even receive a text or email with your name in the opening let alone a term of endearment or a tender remark in closing with the sender’s name. Instead brief messages are made even briefer by abbreviations like OMG (Oh My God) or lol (laugh out load.) I am no hater of progress and I use both emails and texting and marvel at how quickly we can communicate.

I am in fact writing this in the Notes on my IPhone as I wait for the pipeline construction crew to show up at the job site. I am a contract pipeline inspector and I love my work. It is a great gig, getting paid to watch other people work. I travel across the country inspecting pipeline installations. I plan to do this till I’m seventy and then write full time. If I become a published author with lots of royalty checks coming in before seventy I might change my plans, maybe not. I love the travel, seeing the country, especially the cooler climes, and meeting new people and seeing new things and new work processes.

But, back to letter writing or at least in a bit. Those familiar with Clint Eastwood’s western The Unforgiven will remember the dime western novelist who first chronicles the exploits of English Bob then after Bob is ignobly run out of town by the sheriff, Little Bill, he begins to write about Bill’s exploits with a gun. The novelist is introduced and introduces himself as “a writer” to which the response is always the same, “Letters and such?” to which the writer always says, “No, books.” I suppose most writers aspire to writing books. I have up to this point in my writing career written one book, unpublished, many poems and even more letters. But I think it no real slight to say I am a writer of letters and such.

One of my favorite writers, C. S. Lewis, is most famous for his children’s books, the Chronicles of Narnia and his books defending Christianity, most famous of which are Screw Tape Letters and Mere Christianity. My favorite of his published works is a little book called The Great Divorce about a bus trip to Heaven. It is a great read, very thoughtful. I have read everything of his I could find and among them was a book called Letters To An American Lady which is a collection of Lewis’ letters to a lady who wrote to him after reading one of his books.

The correspondence took place over several years. Lewis died on November 22, 1963. Aldous Huxley, the famous Humanist and author of Brave New World, also died that day. But both their obituary were overshadowed by the assassination of an American President, John F. Kennedy. It is a lesser known fact that this author commemorated, rather sadly and along with a grieving nation, losing a beloved President, on his thirteenth birthday that same day. This was before I read Lewis, Huxley, Kennedy or much of anything but I was already a writer of letters, corresponding with an aunt living with her Marine husband and family stationed in Hawaii. I would have liked to have corresponded with C.S. Lewis. His surviving letters to the American Lady tell me he knew the power of a letter and the personal touch.

You begin a letter with a term of endearment such as Dear John, oops bad example as that salutation greeting is famous for letters to military service people to let them know their lover back home has found another. That use aside, “Dear” means the recipient means something to you and lastly “Yours truly” is the close before you sign your name.

But, what does it mean Yours truly? Yours means you have a claim on me. Earlier I quoted the Indigo Girls, Better Off For All That We Let In. Yours means I have let you in. It means not only that I get you but that you get me. Sexual intercourse is a very intimate act but all intercourse is intimate. Even the casual chat is an exchange. The words to the fifties love song come to mind,
I give to you
And you give to me
True love.
That is all we have to give and all we are. When we share our thoughts with another that act of giving ourself to them says this part of me is forever yours and what you share with me of yourself is forever mine, Yours.

What of the word Truly? My frame of reference from a boy has been the words of the Bible. A phrase used often in the King James Version, which I read in and even through several times before I  read the newer modern translations, is “Verily, verily, I say unto you…” Verily in the modern versions is translated Truly and is used twice to emphasize the thought, what I am about to say is so.  “This much is true” is a phrase in Emily’s original song, “True” which you can hear her perform on YouTube under Dancing With Spock. For a long time I thought, “This much is true” was a better title but the I think even she called the song by several titles. Yours truly means I am truly yours.

Emily loved like that, whomever she was with knew what Yours Truly meant. She gave herself completely. That is why she was so truly loved by all who knew her because she truly loved. It is a matter of focus of attention. Jesus warned the boys about the cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches causing them to lose their focus on what is truly yours, yours truly. I had a lover once tell me how she’d know when it was over that I would stop doing the little things. Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond sang You Don’t Bring Me Flowers/You Don’t Sing Me Love Songs but long before the flowers and love songs cease the little acts of tenderness stop. In the words of the Bible again, it is the little foxes that spoil the vine. Or in this case the missing attention to the little things says so loudly you are no longer the center of my attention.

The secret to being a great kisser is to give it your all. I love the scene I have seen in several movies where the guy kisses girl for the first time and realized the kiss did not ring her bell and says wait I can do better then really focused and gives it all he’s got. Michael Smith, the man from Mars in Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, was a great kisser. When the women who swooned at his kisses were asked to describe his technique they all said the same thing, he kisses like he has no where else to be, nothing else to do, and there is no one else in the world but you.

That is the secret to being great at anything, focus. The two great commandments that supersede them all are, “Love the LORD, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Another place it is written, “Whatever your hands find to do, do it with your whole heart. Jesus touched lives because he loved with that kind of focus.

One of my favorite stories about how attention to detail communicates true love follows:

A man was running late and about
to miss his morning commuter
train to work. As he bounded up
the ramp to the train he collided
with a newspaper boy with an arm
full of papers to sell to the
commuters before school each
morning. The papers went flying
the train was starting to leave the
station. If the man stopped to
apologize and help the lad pick up
the papers he’d miss his train, be
late to work, and miss an
important meeting. He stopped,
apologized to the boy, and helped
him pick all of the papers. As he
was bent over picking up the
scattered newspapers, the young
boy looked him in the eyes and
asked, “Are you Jesus?”

Dear Emily,

We who were privileged to know you on your brief journey to earth, saw through your disguise, and responded in kind to your love. Thank you for reminding us to focus on the little things in this life. Some say the devil is in the details but you taught us that the opposite is true – the Divine is in the details. Thanks for the memories.

Yours truly,
Dad

Your friend, fellow traveler, and Emily’s Dad,
Yours truly,
David White