Scheherazade – XII — Love Letters

A remembrance of my father's letters to his wife and children.

If you wrote my father a letter, he would write you back.

You could count on it. Usually he’d write at length and most likely the same day. He was an utterly reliable correspondent. He showed up in correspondence in the same way he showed up for his joint-custody weekends, effortlessly and consistently. Barring business travel he was there for his sons every weekend of our childhoods, one after the other, year in and year out, dedicated until you almost stopped noticing.

When we were very young, his letters would come for us from his travels. To Master Chris. To Master Adam. They’d be penned on hotel stationery or company letterhead. Their language and tone would be calibrated for our age, letting us know what Poppy was working on so far away, whether his business plans were going to expectation, what work associates in these faraway places he admired or disliked, and what new or amazing things he had stumbled across. “ I watched men wearing kites jump from cliffs this morning!”

Of cour…