Every once in a while, you have to do something to shake things up. Like, say, pack up your kids and stuff and move 7000 miles away to a tiny island just off the equator where Margaret Mead used to hang out.
Which is what my family did in 1964. There was a lot going on that year— the Civil Rights Act, miniskirts, the premiere of Jeopardy!— watch Season Four of Mad Men to get a feel for all that. I was eight years old, and my three sisters and I had never been farther from our suburban Detroit home than Canada, which involved driving through a tunnel for a few miles. Years later, when pressed for an explanation on why we went, my father said, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
During our years in American Samoa, it was difficult to stay in touch with family back home. A phone call was reserved for death, and the internet hadn’t even occurred to Al Gore yet. So my mother and father wrote letters, faithfully, once a week, that would be sent out on the Saturday plane to the states. For four years, they chronicled every event, every feeling, every pot roast that occurred and sent this weekly serialized adventure story home to the two sets of grandparents who were still reeling from this act of lunacy by their usually level-headed children.
When we finally returned from the jungle, my Polish grandmother (who never once in her life threw anything away), presented my parents with an amazing collection. Each letter had been pored over, shared, discussed and then carefully preserved in a shoebox. This loose leaf journal with Thom McAn on the cover was later xeroxed four times by my mother and distributed to each daughter, a history of a remarkable time captured in a binder.
The binder gathered dust for years as we lived our lives and went on to other adventures. Then about ten years ago, watching my mother, Jean, fade away from a degenerative brain disease called PSP that robbed her of her ability to speak, I found it on my bookshelf. Looking for a way to communicate with her, I started reading some of the letters out loud to her, letters that she and my father had written over fifty years ago that chronicled a golden time in our lives. Much of the content was mundane – you would not believe the amount of typewriter ink wasted on what we had for dinner – but buried in between the narrative about what the kids did and how humid it was is a diary that tells a story of an ordinary family who were changed in ways they would not have believed possible.
This project is a memoir-ish, travelogue-like, stand-up comedy routine mash-up. It’s not exactly a blog but isn’t really a book—hey, its a blook!—that combines excerpts from the letters with my own memories and a bunch of made-up dialogue. It all happened, but add a filter of 50 years to that and some of it is a bit fuzzy. I’ve changed the names of all the wonderful people on the island with us because I can’t put words in their mouths without their permission, but they’ll know who they are and remember as well.
As for my family, they were there and have their own memories. My sisters have always been my best friends and if they disagree with my interpretation of anything, I’m sure I will hear about it at Thanksgiving. They won’t be shy about commenting, as they are not shy about anything.
The best thing about reading the letters has been hearing my parent’s voices again. The sarcasm, the wit, the fear of the unknown, all help fill in bits and pieces of what it must have taken for my mom and dad to jump off this particular cliff.
This story is dedicated to my mother and father, for believing that safe and sound at home doesn’t always trump tan and clueless with palm trees.
And to Maggie, who kept telling me “Just shut up and write it.”
To get started: Post 1: The Terror of the Trolls
The Samoan Letters 