Fragile Paper

12:00 PM
No one has come in the library at all today, and Macy doesn’t start back until next week.

12:07 PM
No one reads books anymore.

12:45 PM
Well, I’m going to read a book if no one else does. Ha. Take that, cruel, illiterate world!

1:00 PM
Still trying to figure out which book to read. This one has a pretty spine. What is it?
“The Lifecycle and Habits of the Tropical Leech.”

1:01 PM
No. Too many… illustrations.

1:08 PM
I’ve settled on reading a history book. “The March of Folly,” by Barbara W. Tuchman. I haven’t read it in a while. And after quoting it to that nitwit in the police department, I think it deserves the attention.

1:20 PM
There’s a letter in this book! Someone left personal correspondence in a library book!

1:21 PM
Well, at least they didn’t write the personal correspondence in the book. I’ll put the letter in the lost and found box.

1:22 PM
But what if it’s important? What if it’s a coded letter that the government needs to discover secret spy things?

1:25 PM
It is my public duty to read this letter and possibly, if it’s of dire consequence, deliver it to the appropriate government official.

1:30 PM
I will go make some tea to calm my nerves, and then I shall read this letter.

1:38 PM
What if the letter is in code? What if I can’t tell that it’s a secret message? What if it’s so secret that I can’t see the secret?

1:42 PM
It’ll sit there. Secretly. And I’ll be driven mad and drool and finally die of curiosity. They’ll find me in the library. Dead. Foaming at the mouth.

1:43 PM
And I’ll never know the secret.

1:47 PM
I live in a library! There must be many books on code-breaking in here! I shall go find them and have them on hand for when I read the letter!

1:59 PM
I hope the letter is in Morse Code, because that appears to be the main topic of all these books. Or binary.

2:00 PM
I hope it’s not in binary. I feel ill just looking at the examples in the book. All those zeroes and ones.

2:03 PM
Well, here’s one on invisible ink. It’s got drawings and diagrams and pictures. Oh my.

3:00 PM
Alright! I’m ready. I shall read this letter, and then I shall break its crafty code like a trained spy! I saw a movie where they did that, and it looked quite simple. I think I can do it.

3:02 PM
I do the newspaper crosswords every morning. That’s practically code-breaking. I have experience.

3:05 PM
Ok. I have the letter in front of me. I have as many reference books on devilish codes that I could find. I’m ready.

3:06 PM
Just after I make another cup of tea.

3:15 PM
Right. Now. To open the letter. This is exciting!

3:18 PM
It’s …in English. Perhaps there’s some sort of message if I string together the first letters of every word? A secret sentence, perhaps?

3:20 PM
No. Damn. This is a let down. Well, I might as well read the actual letter, since I’ve gotten this far.

3:21 PM
It’s a love letter, to some girl named Katie. It looks quite new, too, so it’s a recent love letter. I didn’t think people wrote these anymore. My daughter and her husband certainly never wrote them. They seem to communicate to one another by short memo sticky notes stuck on the refrigerator whenever one of them happens to be home.

3:22 PM
Which begs the question of how on earth they had a daughter. Perhaps very suggestive sticky notes?

3:27 PM
Sam used to write me love letters like this one. I have them in a box somewhere—where did I put that box? I think I’ll go find it.

4:07 PM
What was it I was looking for?

4:09 PM
Right, letters from Sam.

4:33 PM
Ha! Here it is, under my couch. Victorious! Victorious! I shall do a victory dance! I came, I searched, I found! I put it here for safekeeping. Haha, or sofakeeping.

4:34 PM
Hahaha.

4:35 PM
The cats left the room in panic. Probably because they realized I would vanquish them if they stayed.

4:40 PM
These letters start thirty-seven years ago… They’re all thin and fragile-feeling.

4:45 PM
My Dear Meredith,
I write these words for your eyes alone…
Hmm. I’d forgotten that we were soppier than a drenched dishcloth. It’s nice to see my real name written out, though. It was a wrench, giving it up, since Sam always told me that it was the name for me. Goddess of the sea, he said, because I was on the swim team.
I hope you don’t mind my writing you a letter, as I know we haven’t known each other for very long. I just found myself thinking about you, and wondering what you were doing.
Ha! As if I minded. The day I got this in the mail, I nearly blew half my brain from delight.

5:00 PM
I’d better close the library. Then I’ll read more of those letters…I’d forgotten how many there were.

5:08 PM
Ha! Here’s the first one he wrote after we were married…
My Dear Meredith,
Now that we’re married, perhaps writing you is a bit silly. I know you’ll laugh at me, but I want to always write to you, right up until the day I die. Writing to you makes me think about the things that are important to me—and by writing to you, I think I will be a better recorder of everything I do than if I simply wrote it down in my log book. I will hide these letters for you to find—in your favorite books, maybe! I hope that will keep it a little more interesting over the years…
I miss finding letters from Sam in my tea kettle in the morning. One time he hid one in the bottom of the bird feeder. It took me ages to find it, because I’d always top off the bird feed before it got low enough to see the envelope.

5:20 PM
And here’s an even later one! I always meant to put these in chronological order. Funny how I never got around to it.
Good manners, no matter what you say, are important. As a civil engineer, I feel I must be as civil to other people as I can! Haha! Do you get it, Meredith? I know you don’t like puns—but, as we both have noticed, you’re starting to make them, too. I think puns are contagious. I hope my following sketch of the bridge we’re building at work makes up for my bad sense of humor, Sea Goddess…
And here is the perfect scale drawing of the small bridge over the river near our house. And yes, the sketch of me on one side—I can tell it’s me, because he always drew me with a steaming teapot on my head—waits while a figure that was supposed to be him—which he signified with a heart drawn on his sleeve—works on building the bridge towards me.
I’d forgotten this drawing.

6:00 PM
And here’s nearly the last letter.
I’ve been a bridge and road-building engineer for nearly twenty years, and I still can’t seem to build a little tree house for our daughter. I’ll do that this weekend.
And he did.
Would you like a tree house, too? Full of books? And teapots?
Yes, of course I’d love a tree house.
When we are old, I will build us a tree house in the back yard. It will have a drafting table for me, and a bookcase for you.
You never got old.