My Name was Supposed to be Elizabeth Ann

Dear Graduating Class of 2020, 

I hope this letter finds you well. I hope this letter finds you. 

It’s been awhile, since we were all together. Friday, March 13, 2020, to be exact, the last day of our pre-pandemic world. That night, New Jersey’s governor closed our school for two weeks. Two weeks became five, then the remainder of the year. You lost prom and senior trip, the last few precious months of childhood. July’s socially distanced graduation lacked its celebratory soundtrack, its audience, and even many of the usual participants. 

You know all that, yes? You remember?

I’m curious, however, whether you remember Santiago and Amir? Do you recall your five-year letters?

It’s okay if you don’t. There’s no quiz and no need to study, though I would like to tell you a story, if you have a few minutes? 

When I was a kid, my father bought a fish tank, filled it with tropical fish, and set it atop my mother’s hope chest, in the basement family room of our Dauphin, PA house. Mom did not want the tank placed there. The chest had belonged to her mother, who had died of ovarian cancer, aged 30, when my mother was only two. My father, however, was a bully. Spiteful and mean and always blaming others for his self-wrought tribulations, so of course he ignored Mom’s wishes and of course the tank leaked and ruined the chest’s beautiful art deco veneer.

She never forgave him.

Because of course, he never apologized for his damage nor repaired it–he didn’t even try–and my mother’s warped hope chest migrated throughout the house, then to Maryland and Florida when—decades later—Mom became unable to live independently and moved in with my younger sister. Somedays, she stored her mementoes inside. Somedays, blankets and clothes. And someday, Mom told me, the chest would become mine. By then, my parents had divorced, and I had married and had refinished a few pieces of furniture that graced our new home. Surely I could restore Mom’s piece, someday.

But, I neither needed nor wanted my mother’s hope chest. 

At all.

Because it was, I thought, beyond repair. Because it smelled not of cedar but decay and evoked memories that wafted like poison through my well-being. I wanted none of that in my house, in my life. If ever she gave it to me, I would store it … somewhere, or set it by the curb on trash day and not tell her. She would be devasted otherwise, I knew.

See, I did not want my mother’s hope chest, but I also did not want to hurt my mother by refusing her gift. Because it was a gift, an irreplaceable symbol of our shared and troubled history, and she had faith in me that I would care for them–both the object and its stories–in ways that she could not.

What to do?

Remember how Amir asks Baba that same question in The Kite Runner, when Baba is diagnosed with cancer? Remember how Santiago asks the Alchemist, when the tribesmen threaten to kill him if he doesn’t turn himself into the wind?

Funny, isn’t it, how you can be at one stage of your life and think you have all the information you need to decide… whatever it is you need to decide… while at the same moment you’re thinking about the future and realizing you have zero idea what’s for dinner today let alone where you’ll be and what you’ll be doing five months or even years from now. 

Many of you were like that, five years ago when I assigned you to write a letter to your future selves, which I would keep and mail in June 2025. 

In June 2020, you knew only what had been stolen from you. What you had lost. You were grieving and you were angry and you had no guarantees–none of us did–about whether or when or how the pandemic would end. About whether or when life would return to normal. Whether ‘normal’ would ever again exist.

Now, five years later, you know. 

You’ve lived it. 

Though not in the same ways as I lived it or any of your other classmates.

Yet here we are in 2025, and I’m wondering, What will your reactions be upon receiving your five-year letters? Upon reading what you wrote to yourselves, what you hoped, in June 2020?

I hoped, as the pandemic unfolded, that our shared catastrophe would serve to unite us. To make us better human beings.

I was wrong.

Five years later, our country seems more divided–more selfish and destructive–than ever. More focused on being right than living right. 

More like my father, whose worldview still sickens me.  His world only had space for those who looked like him, believed like him, spoke like him.

He died January 2023. We hadn’t spoken in nearly twenty years.

My mother died January 2024. We spoke nearly every week.

You know, yes? That the story I just shared isn’t merely about an old piece of furniture?

By the time my sister drove from Tampa to Pennsylvania in June 2024 to deliver Mom’s hope chest filled with her books, I’d long ago decided I would restore it somehow. I would make the chest beautiful again, the way our mother’s mother would have recalled it when she was young and beautiful and life stretched before her in all its infinite glories.

I decided I would restore it, because I’d long ago decided that the answer to every iteration of the question ‘What to do’ must be to create, not destroy. To hope, not to despair. To act, not to wallow, and in so doing effect a world wherein achieving your ‘personal legend’ isn’t merely a dream but a possibility.

For all of us. 

I have faith in you, that you want such a world as well. 

I have faith, that you will strive to do what you can to create it. Because whether or not you ever have children, whether the universe gifts you few years or many, you will leave your legacy behind. We must all leave our legacies behind, someday.

And I wonder, What will your legacy say? What will the future think of you, having read it?

Meanwhile, check your mailboxes. I’m mailing your five-year letters next week. 

I hope your letters find you well. I hope your letters find you. 

Serenity. Courage. Wisdom.

Peace to you and yours.

Mrs. Reisinger ❤️

*****

APPARENTLY, YOU CAN TURN LEAD INTO GOLD

Too bad Santiago’s friend the Englishman didn’t pack Cern’s Large Hedron Collider. Recently, a “team of scientists from 174 physics institutes in 40 countries” accidentally turned lead into gold while conducting experiments designed, in part, to mimic “conditions in the universe during and just after the Big Bang.”

Restoring my mother’s hope chest wasn’t quite as elaborate a process. Because I wasn’t confident I could replace its veneer without causing further damage, I hired a professional, the same craftsman who restored three barn finds for my upstate writing nook.

This is what it looked like pre-restoration. Can you see the holes in the veneer?

An this is my mother’s hope chest fully restored.

Isn’t it gorgeous? Not bad for nearly 100 years old. Thanks, Peck’s “Second Chance” Furniture Restoration!!

No more fish tanks or basements–it’s next to my writing nook in a spare room of our home away from home.

Pretty sure Mom would be thrilled 🩷

*****

THE VERY HUNGRY HACKSAW, or How my StoryADay May became StoryADay MayNot…

I blame Hubby. 

Although I’d been a bit under the weather and started the challenge a few days late, by day eight I’d caught up, and by week three I’d only skipped two prompts. (I was allowing myself no more than one per week, if needed.) Thanks to day three’s prompt, I even had a recurring character and several linked, rough story frameworks.

Cue the hacksaw.  

(This next bit is a bit gross, by the way.)

While replacing his cant hook’s broken wooden handle, Hubby used said hacksaw to cut off a frozen bolt. Instead, said hacksaw nearly cut off his index finger. 

Thank goodness it didn’t. Thank goodness he only needed four stitches and a tetanus shot, and thank goodness it was his left hand, not his right.

Cue the cliches, Accidents happen. 

But, we were six hours from home when it happened and trying to take care of STUFF and MORE STUFF before heading back and, while I am very much in control mid-crises, I tend to lose it after the fact. Which is why I fell off the StoryADay wagon 21 days in–my brain was too busy catastrophizing and my minutes were too busy prioritizing. 

I’m better now, thanks, but more importantly so is he, even though I nearly killed him when he said he’d remove the stitches himself, he’d seen how they’d done it, last time he’d needed to be sewn closed. 

((Sigh))

Fortunately for both of us, he let the professionals handle it.

SORRY, KEANU. I REALLY WANTED TO LOVE YOU, but…

I am not your target reader. 

The scone was delicious, though! And the tea 🙂

WHAT I’M READING NOW…

Erasure, by Percival Everett. Only halfway through and I’m wondering exactly why it didn’t win the 2001 Pulitzer? 

WHAT I’M READING NEXT…

Six Days in Bombay, by Alka Joshi. I really liked her debut novel The Henna Artist, and when I saw her latest on my library’s New Fiction shelf I had to check it out. It’s due back next week, so I need to get reading.

RECENT READS & RECOMMENDATIONS…

None were what I expected. All stuck their endings and I would reread them all, given time and opportunity.

I also read Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros for the inaugural meeting of the Mother-Daughter Book Club. We chatted over drinks and dinner, then (in keeping with the bookish theme) watched Alibi (a play based on an Agatha Christie novel) at a regional theater. A lovely, lovely evening, even though neither one of us figured out whodunit 🥰

A SHOUTOUT TO…

My writer friend and fellow StoryADay Superstar Astrid Egger whose short story “Hippocampus” appears in Sea and Cedar’s spring issue. Scroll to page 55 to read. You won’t be disappointed!!

COMING UP ON MY NAME WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ELIZABETH ANN…

Next up in July, I’ll be celebrating Independence Day with an original short story very loosely inspired by true events. Also, an update on my longer project, which thankfully I did not abandon during StoryADay.

*****

Thanks for reading! Thanks for sharing!

*****