3 Letters

Grandpa Norman Nash, always with a cigar.

Some blog entries will write themselves--especially when you literally have someone else who wrote for you.  Today, I share three love letters my Grumpy Grandpa Norman wrote to my sweet Grandma Lillian (for whom my daughter is named).   Grandpa passed away in 2004, several years after Grandma.  I love reading these, especially knowing what a grouch he could be. These are the first of about a couple dozen letters that I am grateful to have.  I especially love the "sex note."  Enjoy.

Below is his very first letter to Lillian written almost 75 years ago:
~ ~ ~

Norman Nash
1360 East Parkway
Brooklyn, NY

Miss Lillian Cohen
208 Hooper Street
Brooklyn, NY

Postmarked: September 8, 1938

Dear Lillian,

This is a little late, but I have an alibi.

To refresh your memory, I am he who rowed you around that bath tub of a lake at Alleban Acres and who promised to send you a snap-shot of yourself.* When the film was developed, the negative showed that you had lost your head. The rest of the picture was as clear and distinct as you could wish, but the head was cut off sharp as a knife. Probably, some one at the developing studio appropriated it: - they so rarely see a really pretty girl.

Since the film was in miniatures, I tried to have it enlarged, in spite of its dismemberment. But the negative was returned without the enlargement; they probably thought that I had not known about the decapitation. I’ll try again today.

To see you will be my reward for all this trouble. It’s your own fault. You gave me your address under no threats.

Sincerely,

Norman

*There probably were others who did the same, but I prefer not to notice.

~ ~ ~

Norman Nash
1360 East Parkway
Brooklyn, NY

Miss Lillian Cohen

208 Hooper Street
Brooklyn, NY

Postmarked: February 6, 1939

Sunday – Two lonely days since Friday

Darling-

Perhaps I had better sign my name and close now. Nothing can say more for me that one word.

Don’t expect this letter to equal my first magnum opus. I was inspired when I gave birth to that one. Now I must hurry to finish this by 9:30, when the last mail is collected. I can’t work under pressure.

This weak and wavy handwriting may be blamed in part on a defective pen, but you are the real culprit. You’re making a nervous wreck of me. When at school the ugly face of the lecturer is transformed into the divine, smiling picture of you; when the words of a problem on girders amble across the page and take up their positions, much as at a football game, to spell out “Lillian”; when the beautiful models posing in the subway advertisement posters humbly beg to avoid comparison; when I breath your name’ – well,--

I’d better hurry. It is past 9:30.  The vocabulary building course has no date set; probably it means that you may set your own time.

I’ll call at 6:45, Friday.

How shall I sign off? That you are my darling, and I hope that I am always

Yours,

Norman

~ ~ ~

Norman Nash

1360 East Parkway

Brooklyn, NY

Miss Lillian Cohen

c/o Master Bookbinding Company

49 East 21st Street

New York, NY

Postmarked May 4, 1939

Lily Darling-

But that’s redundant. The words are synonymous.

And Lily is synonymous with goodness and sweetness and lovableness; at times, childlike simplicity; at others, poise and carriage and sheer “class” that would make the polished ladies of Hollywood turn a deep collective green. And at all times Lily rhymes with beauty.

A new page for a new line (of thought, I mean). I began to grind out this possible future bit of evidence Tuesday, but all that dropped out of the mental hopper was the first immortal stanza. But that was easy.  The obvious is always easy; the plain fact of your wonderfulness stared me in the face. And in my Homeric way, I responded. Words, even spoken, are such inflexible things, anyway. Wait until Saturday, Lily, and when that sick-dog look that I mean to be adoring creeps into my almond eyes, you’ll know more than my English II essay style will ever tell you.

We should never have had a date last Saturday. There was the same odd undercurrent of restraint that I remember of a Sunday last December.

You know—we’re a couple of queer ducks. If one of us thinks that the other has turned cold, he immediately freezes up. When the first, innocent, notices this, he congeals too, and we’re off building up to a letdown. It’s frightening. But we’ll have this out Saturday.

Progress Note: The answers to the patrolman’s exam have been published. My grade is 80: I think I’ll remain a clerk. I hang my head in shame, Lily. Of the twenty word-definitions, I missed five, ingloriously. To punish myself, I ate jello for lunch today. Ugh.

Angel!

Sex Note: After intensive examination, I have concluded that the kitten you have requisitioned is, for the most part, female. However, the remaining kittens of the second litter is, I feel, predominantly male.  You can tell me Saturday which you prefer. The time will be 7:00 P.M. at 211 Hewes St. (Somehow, it doesn’t sound like home.)

I’m left an entire sheet, Lily, to tell you that

I love you.

Norman

Grandpa and Grandma

My daughter smiles like this, sometimes.