Return to sender

By Lynn St. Georges 

One nice thing about electronic mail is the sent folder. Folks wanting to keep a record of things they’ve sent to family and friends over the years can easily archive those writings. Before email the letters went one way and we never saw them again, missing views of our younger selves … unless you have a parent who saves letters you and your siblings sent over the years. 

My father bequeathed me his trunk of papers that included, among other things, his original birth announcement from 1926, his military papers showing he was excluded from serving in WWII because of physical frailties from a childhood bout of rheumatic fever, and a thick folder of letters from all his children and ex-wife. 

My father’s birth announcement 

Even better, though, was the surprise envelope I received in the mail a couple of months ago. My father and his wife insisted that what was his went to his children and what was hers to her children. It’s not hard for some crossover during a 43-year shared life, so over the next 18 months as our stepbrother and stepsister went through their mother’s things, who passed away a year after our father, they found things that belonged with the St. Georges children. And that explained the surprise envelope I received in the mail. 

My letters in my father’s trunk were from the floundering and lost soul I was in my teens and early 20s. I shouldn’t have been surprised to read, in letters from two sisters and mom, the same sentence – “What are we going to do about Lynn?” – repeated.  

Yeah, sorry fam. I know those years were rough on you as well.  

The content in this envelope, though, showed the beginnings of a future that seemed hopeful. This envelope covered the years when I was starting to figure things out and included letters and clippings. I was settled with Jim by then and had returned to college (University of New Mexico), albeit in fits and starts, but I was determined. Being a St. Georges meant going to college, even if on a 10-year schedule. 

The fits and starts included dropping in and dropping out, taking a class here and there without really having a goal other than to get a degree. It wasn’t until I was nearly done with all the group requirements that I considered journalism. I loved English courses and decided journalism was similar but with better odds at a paying job. The creative writing I’d been doing to date wasn’t going to pay the bills. 

Long ago writing 

One day I walked into the journalism department to express my interest. I met with an older woman who typified journalists in those days with the low, rough voice from too many cigarettes and too much booze. She said, “Can you type?” I proudly said I could and she sat me down in front of a typewriter and said, “Show me.” I pecked away using the index finger of each hand and she quickly stopped me and ordered that I take a typing class first. 

The serious college student 

I began my journalism studies the next semester. It wasn’t long before I took a persuasive writing class taught by author Tony Hillerman. The letter I sent my dad then shows the beginning of a dream. 

The beginnings of excitement are showing while enrolled in Tony Hillerman’s class 

I graduated with a BA in journalism in December 1983. The way to break into journalism is by “paying your dues,” meaning finding some small weekly newspaper where you work for almost nothing. I was 28 years old and living with Jim. We did not yet have custody of his daughter, Amber, so he wasn’t willing to move, and as an older graduate with debts it just wasn’t logical. I kept doing what I’d been doing – working part time for the Albuquerque Journal as an assistant at the city desk and freelancing. I’d also gained a lot of experience as a college student having interned at both the Albuquerque Business Magazine and United Press International (UPI).  

I was excited about what I was doing. I loved feature writing, traveling to interview people around the state and seeing my byline in the paper. Jefferson Spivey was one such story. (I googled him after being reminded of this story and learned he lived an interesting life and passed away in 2022.) 

Excitement begins to show pride 

I mailed resumes and clippings until I was hired as a full-time features writer for the Greeley (Colorado) Tribune in autumn 1985. Jim and I decided to see how things worked out before he joined me there, so I went alone and signed a one-year lease on a house.  

It’s typical to have a mentor at a newspaper … unless your editor’s first day is the same as yours and she is as young and inexperienced as you are. Ten weeks after I was hired, I was fired for not being good enough. I was devastated and returned to Albuquerque, where I spent the next month on the couch, emotionally wounded. 

A former colleague at UPI called me in January 1986 asking me to cover the upcoming legislative session for them. I refused. He begged. Finally I acquiesced and took the job, driving daily to Santa Fe in my 1969 VW van. It was among the best things anyone has insisted I do because I rejoined the world; however, I never worked in journalism again. 

I was hired as a technical editor for a DOD contractor, and after a few years was recruited by a DOE contractor at the Hanford Site. After 18 months, I moved into a role in the environmental field and had a successful and enriching career for the next 25 years.  

I never wrote creatively again until George invited me to participate in Voices of August 12 years ago. For our 2015 VOA gathering, we had moved to the coast and were staying in a Portland hotel overnight. I wandered to the breakfast room the morning after our gathering to get coffee. While in the queue, a young woman asked me what brought me to Portland. After telling her, she exclaimed, “Oh! You’re a writer!” 

I paused, smiled, and responded, “Yes, I am a writer.” 

I had forgotten those budding feelings of success as a writer in the early 1980s until I rediscovered that younger self in these letters to my father. 

***

Lynn St. Georges has been a proud member of the Voices of August community since its inception. It has been both an honor and a privilege to share these virtual pages with so many wonderful people. Thanks to George and the VOA community, for the first time since the end of 1985 and that dreadful month curled in a fetal position on the couch, I’ve been able to say that yes, I am a writer. 

Editor’s note: Yes, Lynn is definitely a writer. She’s also a fine human being, an empath who wears her heart on her sleeve and voices her opinions forcefully. She’s an avid reader, a lover of poetry and music, and a prolific commenter on VOA posts (as if you hadn’t noticed). She’s been fearless and honest in describing her losses and setbacks in life but also her resiliency and triumphs. We met on a sunny day in 2009 after an email correspondence that began when she wrote a letter to the editor of The Oregonian and I, as Sunday Opinion editor, reached out to her in response. Turned out to be the start of a great friendship.

Tomorrow: Lillian Mongeau Hughes, “Balance”