Delhi

Handwritten Letters

Hope I’ve avoided your dog rescue emergency email mailbox, which is enough of a mouthful to warrant the abbreviation DREEM.

And yes, I also have multiple mailboxes that correspond to multiple identities and functions. Most are accessible but some are encoded end-to-end. More on that later...

“————-” comes from our time in Richmond living within a short walk of the James River, and reflects local dialect.

This is just a note to confirm that your return from hospital has gone smoothly and you are back in action.

Below the asterisk is optional reading.

Anyhow.

***

This (here) is my archaeic, paleomail (EOMAIL), derived from the fact we lived on upscale Riverside Drive, Richmond about the time email had penetrated societies lowest strata, to wit, the commuter federal scientist, GS-15, who suffered during the week in a convenient but low rent district near NIST in Gaithersburg.

I started out on upper Wisconsin Avenue at Highland House between Sacks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany in Friendship Heights when I first moved to NIST in the DC area shortly after the death of both my mother and grandmother within the same week in 1997.

Five minutes from the Red Line Metro, an easy 20 min ride to Gaithersburg, and the Institute had a shuttle from Metro to the NIST Campus.

I had previously replied on MacIntosh hardware but the Federal system allowed only PCs.

An additional benefit of Highland House was it was two blocks from exclusive “The Irene” where my favorite aunt and Godmother lived whose name was Mary Louise (in Southernspeak, MarL’weeze). The sole reason for this gratuitous detail is her familiar name was Aunt Weezie.

My writing “career” began when I was age 10 and Weezie was in India with the Foreign Service. We wrote frequently, and for the same reason.

Although she sent small carved mahogany elephants and small hammered brass handwork objects, I valued her letters and critiques more.

She was gifted as a writer but grew up in a sibship of four brothers. In that era, the girls in the family were the last in line for educational resources. Of the five she was the only one without college.

She was, in my opinion, the brightest and most socially adept. As a minor Ambassador’s wife, she fell into her role as hostess in their various postings to Czechoslovakia and New Delhi with grace and conviction.

***

Thing was, she and her retired husband (federal economist from a legacy Civil Service family) had chosen a place to live in Arlington and had moved their things but not taken up the new residence, when he died.

My federal job at NIST began the same week Weezie, newly widowed, found her apartment as luck would have it. I was miles from Birmingham where my wife was finishing medical school (after being on Pathology faculty at UAB) and my daughter was settled n a university-affilated gifted school.

The closest internship she could find to DC was Richmond...

(to be continued, and thanks for the inspiration).