The Letters You Keep Might Hold a Treasure

And the letters you send should be filled with a treasure for a time machine

Tucked away for the past 30 plus years is a letter my high school English teacher, Mrs. Esther Grosvenor, sent to me after I graduated.

Daily, I rarely remember the letter’s existence. But the letter has often resurrected itself whenever I’ve been about to embark on a life-altering change.

Mrs. Grosvenor taught the Colfax High School seniors their last English class before they graduated and embarked upon the world to conquer whatever they thought lay before them.

While the 17 and 18-year-old students in her class spent more time counting the days until graduation than they did counting their verbs and nouns, Mrs. G. (as we affectionately called her), nevertheless, persevered in her job in assigning the task of diagramming sentences and drilling the rows of pimple-faced boys and girls on the difference in meaning between affect and effect, lie and lay, and simile and metaphor.

If she was impatient with our impertinence, she didn’t show it. After 40 plus years in the classroom, Mrs. Grosvenor had developed enough equanimity about her job that not much fazed her in her interactions with children disguised as adults.

When I finished her class and Colfax High School in 1984, I also left the town for the bright city lights of Des Moines. Six weeks after I walked across the gymnasium stage, my parents had sold the old-Miss-Byal house where we lived, packed up the green Chevy pick-up, and moved us off to the town where they worked for the city government.

After I moved to Des Moines, I wrote to Mrs. Grosvenor. I don’t remember the details of my letter to her; likely, I thanked her for attending my graduation reception and mentioned my move. Based on her response to me, I must have had questions about the role of women in the workforce.

Since then, I’ve lived out the macro dilemmas that face women, work, and…

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