I am standing in a hotel bathroom 5:58am. It’s 6:58 at home, and late for me to be just waking but yesterday was full of travel and catching up with family and I’m pretty sure I got chicken-finger-wasted.
There’s a package in my hands. White rectangle the size of a book. In fact, I know now that it is a book and I’m feeling disappointed. I have waited weeks for this package. Why would he send me a book? And it’s hardcover. Must be some new Stephen King. My brother and I have very different definitions of “treasure”. Why in the world would he say it was irreplaceable?
Two weeks ago, maybe a little more, I got a text from my big brother saying he mailed me something important and it would arrive in two days. He wouldn’t say what it was, only that it was worth more than gold and could not be replaced.
I love a good surprise so I went about my days expectantly curious. I waited two days, four days, 10 days. The package never arrived. I looked up the tracking information and it said it had been undeliverable, with an incomplete address. I asked my brother if it had been returned to him. It hadn’t.
The more I thought about his description and secrecy, the more I knew that whatever was in the package was related to my dad. I needed to have it. I drove to the post office.
The line was what you’d expect for two days before a major holiday: long and unmoving. I stood there for maybe 45 minutes until the one clerk working called me up. His name was Ben and he was very kind. He took the tracking number and set off to find my package.
Finally. I might hold the treasure today, I thought. I hoped with all my heart it was something like Dad’s old bodybuilding photos. I’d love to have them.
Ben was gone a long time, and I thought for some reason about jury deliberations. Is it the longer deliberation, the better outcome? Or if they come back quickly that’s a good sign? I couldn’t remember.
I held firmly on to hope until Ben finally re-emerged from the warehouse portion of the post building.
“It’s in the unprocessed bin”, he said with a shrug. I grinned at him as politely as I could, disappointed but hopeful. I wanted him to show me what bin. I could find it myself, I thought. Instead he asked me to write down my phone number and he assured me that he would find my package. I hadn’t told him what it was but I think he could sense my urgency.
The next day, Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I drove five hours up Chattanooga way to be with my mom and her husband’s family. I invited myself months ago, thinking that being in the country with people who feel like family would be good for my heart, and for my boys.
I was sitting in a lime-green chair in the kitchen, gazing at the pristine 1970s wallpaper that was older than I am, when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number so I didn’t answer. Next, I received a text. It was Ben. He found my package. He was holding it for me.
I called my husband, who was still in town and would be meeting us that night, to see if he could go and grab it for me. He was able to retrieve the package and bring it with him to the hotel last night. I woke up and there it was.
My heart sank when I stumbled towards it this morning and finally was able to hold it in my hands. In the pictures my brother sent me, it looked like a flat white envelope. Pictures. I knew it! Now I was holding this huge hard-cover novel (who even reads books this big? People with giant hands?) full of confusion. My dad never wrote any books.
The room was dark and everyone was still asleep so I took the package to the bathroom to open it. It’s loud and I’m sorry but not sorry enough to leave it. I’ve waited a long time for this. I have a fleeting thought that I’m opening something from my family on thanksgiving and that’s pretty nice, since I won’t be with them today.
Here I stand, under harsh unforgiving hotel bathroom lights, equal parts eager and apprehensive, considering this package. I rip the soft plastic mailer and pull out a book and for a moment I just stare at it. Blue, hard-cover, part of a series I read years ago. Maybe it’s a Christmas gift? I don’t understand. I deflate a little. I know my brother. He isn’t a prankster or a practical joker. He is generous and thoughtful and above all, he is honest. Why would he have sent this to me in such a hurry? What does it mean?
Looking closer, I can see there’s something inside the book. I carefully flip open the front cover and find two cards and two letters from my dad. Treasure. They’re from 1990 or so, when I was 10 years old and he was in jail. My mom never let us have them -in fact, we thought he went three years without reaching out at all – and kept them in boxes in her living room. Maybe that’s for the best, since kids lose things.
One of the letters is folded neatly in a square shape. I gently unfold it as if it were a napkin made of thin crepe paper and my fingers were sharp blades, to reveal the most elegant penmanship. In his distinctive slanted cursive, my Dad had written, “this one is for Jenée only.”
Shaking, I open it and begin to read.
Princess, I wonder sometimes if you know how truly beautiful you are.
It’s a love letter. An appreciation of my attributes, what’s to be admired and adored about me, a two-page missive on me as a human and why it’s so good that I have been born. Why it’s so good that I belong to him. I cry. I sob. This – these words from my father – is everything I’ve needed from him my whole life. I’m in awe. It ends with,
I have much to be thankful for, not least of which is you.
Love,
Dad
I am blown away by the remarkable timing of this. The magnitude of it. I don’t know if I have ever seen this letter before. (Later in the day I ask my brother and he confirms that I have not read it before, and that no one knows its contents but me and my beloved Dad.) I don’t know how or where my brother found it. I do know, with all my heart and soul, that my dad loves me. He loved me then, and he loves me still.
I know that yesterday at Zaxbys, someone yelled out my dads name. I know at Chick-Fil-A, a cellphone rang and Wyatt looked at me with wide eyes and said “Mommy! Grandaddy’s call! I hear it!” I know that eagles have gone before me on this trip and when I see them in the sky above me I think of him.
5:58 in the morning. 2 star hotel in the middle of a cornfield. Crying in the bathroom. Best Thanksgiving ever.