RETURN TO WRITING STRATEGIES

Dear Natalie...Letters from the Heart
By Terri Mrosko

When I was a little girl, about the same age my youngest daughter is now, I loved to write. My Campfire Girls troop elected me to write the dialog for a skit we entered in a contest. The skit won third place.

When I was in junior high school, my eighth grade teacher was disappointed in the essays the class turned in. She passed them back, and I noticed that when she finished handing them out, I did not get mine back. Miss Visci leaned back against the edge of her desk and announced there was actually one excellent essay of the bunch, and then she read it aloud. The essay was mine.

When I was in college and taking a creative writing class for the first time, I fictionalized an experience that happened to me while serving as a juror on a murder trial. My professor told us he would like one of the students to read their story to the whole class. I felt my face turn red as I read my story aloud.

These are memories from my childhood and early college days I had not thought about in years. They are also some of the stories I included in letters to my daughter, Natalie. The letters were written about a year ago, while I was still with a company for which I worked over 20 years.

Nothing extraordinary in writing letters to your daughter, you might think. The unique thing about these letters is I wrote each of them about a week before I was to embark on an annual weeklong ski trip out West. Natalie is still rather young to bring along on such a trip, and I would rather she not miss school. My wonderful girlfriend Rita agrees each year to add one more to her brood of four, and Natalie stays over Rita's house while we are gone. Natalie never looks forward to these stays, partly because she will miss her mom, but mostly because it is uncomfortable for her to be out of her routine. She spends weeks, and then days, agonizing over her unwanted predicament.

I thought long and hard on how I could make Natalie's stay a little easier and finally came up with the idea of writing the letters. I dated the letters for each day we would be gone and even included little candy goodies in the envelopes. I gave the pile of letters to Rita the morning of my scheduled departure, as I dropped off my child, suitcase and special beanie babies in tow. After dinner each night, Rita would ceremoniously present Natalie one of my letters.

The letter writing idea proved a success. It gave me the opportunity to tell my daughter how much she is loved and valued, something we parents often neglect to say to our kids on a daily basis. It was the writing of my childhood experiences, however, that really made the idea click. Natalie seemed to relish these stories and still gets out her wrinkled copies of the letters and reads them every now and again. They are keepsakes now, words from the heart.

We are leaving on vacation in a few short weeks, and soon it will be time to write my letters to Natalie and share more memories and childhood dreams. This year is extra special, however. This year I am living one of those dreams, one that began with a 10-year-old's words so long ago--words written from the heart. This year I am a writer, pursuing a full-time freelance career after being downsized from the company where I worked for over 20 years.

This year my words will tell an 11-year-old child that dreams really do come true.

© Terri Mrosko. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared online in The Writing Parent. Reprint rights available by contacting Terri Mrosko.