Taking Note

writing towards Bailey

Letter writing is an excellent way of slowing down this lunatic helter-skelter universe long enough to gather one’s thoughts. NICK BANTOCK

Dad in his study

My father Henry Catto maintained that civilization would run more smoothly if humanity adhered to a few of his principles. He had a long list: Do what you say you’re going to do, remember the importance of basic manners, be humble, express gratitude, and clean up after yourself, to name a few. He was also big on correspondence. Once I knew my way around the alphabet, my father expounded on the importance of writing thank-you notes. I was seven, maybe eight, and already stamped as a late bloomer, but my father persevered with his early indoctrination—another one of his beliefs. “It’s important to thank people and it’s easy to do. You only need paper, a pen, an envelope, and a stamp.” He was fond of hotel stationery—now a thing of the past—because it was “free.” He was also big on thrift. “Avoid starting with thank you so much for the… Be creative,” my father would intone.

He was a pro at dashing off notes—a skill that made him beloved as a career diplomat and person. He wrote everyone from the Queen of England, to the hospice nurse who eased his pain, to the bereaved, to inspirational speakers, to foreign dignitaries, to his favorite writers, to those who lost their way, to those who found their calling. He was disciplined. He would return from a dinner party, pen a thank you note to the hostess, stamp it, and leave it out to be whisked to the post office the next morning.

He also wrote me. When I left for college we wrote almost weekly until I got married. At the advanced age of forty-eight, he taught himself to type so I no longer had to decypher his increasingly ghastly handwriting. I bought him an electric Corona and he never looked back. At first, his notes were didactic or read like a daily planner poured into letter form. Then he drifted into introspection — concerns about his kids and their spouses, his grandchildren, the world, problems at work, anxiety about retirement, and feeling irrelevant. Or he would include a random dream or a corny joke. Our letters brought us closer and helped develop my writing voice.

I took last week off from

Substack

to catch up with writing. But not for any publication or in my journal. I am returning correspondence. To date, we’ve received over a thousand emails and texts since our daughter Bailey died three months ago. There are hundreds more handwritten notes. There are dozens of direct messages on Facebook and Instagram that I can no longer open due to some “security” breach. I don’t have the energy to figure out precisely what that means so I will have to let those go for now. It took three months to read anything without weeping inconsolably or feeling frozen at the keyboard wondering how to craft a coherent reply. Nor could I focus. It was a good day when I completed one task, usually walking our dog Rose or weeding. Now I can read and process all the thoughtful messages without losing it. For the most part.

I sit with a mug of coffee. A fresh-cut dahlia or two. A candle. I write ten handwritten notes then ten emails. Texts are much tougher to return since I cannot put them in a folder or respond to them in consecutive order. They keep multiplying like pond minnows. My friends counsel me to stop being so compulsive and give myself time. There’s more to this than expressing genuine gratitude to friends and well-wishers. These notes help jostle me out of the intense self-absorption that comes with mourning and its sidekick, depression. At my current snail’s pace, it will be months before I get to everyone, but I’m in no rush. Writing these notes isn’t a burden. Instead, this practice is a new morning ritual. The luminous

Suleika Jaouad

captures the importance of these small moments:

For the last few months, small joys have been my sustenance… Often these small moments fade from view with the passage of time. What makes it into our memory banks are the bigger things—either the zeniths or the nadirs—but what we end up longing for and leaning on in hard times are the little quotidian comforts and delights; they lift and carry us from day to day. Noting these joys is a muscle I’ve been consciously trying to exercise: training the eye to see them and training the mind to hold onto them.

When my father died, our family received thousands of handwritten condolences — Dad was popular and a well-known public servant. One note jumped out. A man whose name I recall was E. Flores shared his story. In the mid-nineties, Flores was young, rudderless, and working at a dead-end job. A friend persuaded Flores to attend a talk at a community center in San Antonio where a United States ambassador, fluent in Spanish, would speak about the importance of public service. And it was free. That man was my father. Flores felt inspired and after the Q and A approached him. Dad gave him his card and Flores followed up with a note asking how to be a better leader. My father responded, urging Flores to show up for his community and family, get educated, and express gratitude at every turn (so my father.) Flores couldn’t believe “someone important” took the time to craft such a pointed note. He said, “I was just a nobody and he still wrote me.” In his note to me, he said:

I followed your father’s advice, attended community college, got an associate degree, became active in my community, volunteered with a local non-profit to help troubled Latino youth, and now head my Rotary Club. I love my family. I’m happy. All thanks to Ambassador Catto.

I was struck by how he passed my father’s gift of words of gratitude back to our family. I also gained another reminder of how amazing my father was, as well as a prompt to make my words matter. My thank you notes offer neither advice nor wisdom, but they do keep Bailey’s memory in circulation, one word at a time. There is solace in that.