How to Begin 2015...

"Leave all your baggage behind, and have a happy New Year," said the customer service representative from Pottery Barn Kids, as I hung up the phone. It's not important why I was calling customer service, what's important is that she was freakishly specific in her salutation. Especially on the heels of the package that was delivered two days before, on December 31, the dreaded shelf paper letter.

The package sat on the kitchen table for hours, until the sun set on New Year's eve. When I could not stand the suspense any longer, I peeled off it's brown paper wrapping to reveal the tightly wound roll. My mother could have worked for the CIA or the FBI, her documentation of events, both scary and astonishing. This letter was written in 1976, the year I became engaged in my junior year of college and my mother was not happy about it, not in the least. She must have written in anger, for hours, by the immense length, and then chose not to send it.

As I unfurled my past, I braced for the worst. It was bad, very bad. No one wants to learn that someone they love, no matter how angry, quirky and misguided they may be, is depressed and broken hearted. Between my tears and the awful words there were surprises, loving words I had never heard from my mother's lips, ever. The history surrounding this letter is not necessary to go over at this moment (mostly because that would be enough to fill a book). And if there is some karma or destiny involved with the arrival of this mail, five years after my mother's death, it has not revealed itself to me.

Perhaps the customer service represenative's words, still ringing in my ears, was a message from the Universe. I'll leave the baggage, because there is no other healthy choice I can make, and take the best parts of the shelf paper letter into the future, with me.