Love Letters

 Well, fuck-me-in-the-neck as my fellow student, circa 1983, Bob Picklesimer used to say.  The phrase stays with me!

I have been getting rid of stuff for the last couple of years...academic journals, old textbooks, videotapes, vinyl -- and I ran across a box of letters and grade-books.  SIXTY YEAR OLD GRADE-BOOKS!  Fuck-me-in-the-neck. The man never threw away a fucking piece of paper.

So yesterday I decided that the boxes of old class notes had to go.  I'd only transferred these notes from cardboard boxes to plastic boxes six years ago.  I carried each box up from the basement to the recycle bin in the garage.  I didn't want to even accidentally run into Will to explain to him that I was throwing out his old class notes.  These were teaching notes AND notes from classes that he TOOK in the 1950s.  Wow.  I used to throw my class notes into wastepaper baskets on my way out of my classrooms.  Very insulting.  But, I mean, whew!

Among the boxes of notes was this one with letters.  So I got a bee up my butt and decided to sort them for him.  As I did, I ran across a tall stack of letters that I looked into and saw that they were love letters!

So, I've been trying to track down the woman with whom he was having this relationship.  Of course I have.  I know so little of who he was when he wasn't with me.  He kept his life and relationships private, though as I read I began to remember what he had told me about this woman.  

Am I reading these letters to him?  Of course.  I'm curious.  He isn't going to be hurt by my reading these and I will get a deeper understanding of him through the eyes of this other woman.

But right now, I'm looking for her on the web!  Of course I am!  I'm a 21st Century Fox -- I know how to track someone.  I see that she and her husband got divorced in July, 1973.  Will and I got married in August, 1973.  

I wonder what happened to her?  Should I send an email to her ex (who still resides in Washington and is about Will's age)?  I'm just so fucking curious and I have no idea what her maiden name is and today, once I do my homework for my class tonight, I'm going to read the rest of those letters.