True Life Stories:
NEW ADDRESS BOOK
by
Joyce Maynard
As broadcast on NPR
I have been putting off this task for about a year now, but today I finally
tackled it. I bought myself a new address book to replace the old one
that's now in tatters and started recopying names and numbers into it.
By the time I got to the letter "L" I had to take a break.
There are a couple of reasons for this, and writer's cramp is the least of them. It's true, by the time a person gets to my stage of life, she's apt to have a pretty fair accumulation of names in her book. But what's hard about transferring over to a new address book has less to do with all the names you have to copy down than it does with the ones you don't have to copy any more.
There was one name in my book I'm now in the process of retiring, of someone I used to love so wildly I couldn't imagine how a day could go by without talking to him. Within days of meeting him and writing his name in my book, of course, I no longer needed to look his number up any more. It might as well have been tattooed on my heart. Then we parted, and for months I endured a daily struggle, not calling that familiar number. Then came the moment when I realized I didn't even know his number any more. That almost seemed saddest of all.
The last time I started a new address book I copied this man's name and number into my new book, even though it had been a long time since we'd spoken. This time, though, when I got to his letter in the alphabet, I realized there wasn't any point carrying his name over one more time.
It isn't only the names of old sweethearts that give me a start, when I sit down to create my new list of names. There are all those other little reminders of past history, closed chapters, losses, or dead ends, friendships that fell by the wayside, people and places that once seemed so important, and now feel impossibly distant.
In one of my old address books, three whole pages are given over to names of potential babysitters including one who first came into our life when my daughter was six months old. She's eighteen now. Likewise, one old book features the name and number of Rainbow the Clown, a fellow I hired to come and make balloon animals for my son Charlie's birthday party, the year he turned six.
Flipping through a friend's address book, years ago, I came upon a surprising entry: the address and telephone number for Cary Grant. This was years ago, when Cary Grant was still alive. Reading his name, I let out a shriek. "You never told me you knew Cary Grant," I said.
"I don't," she told me. "But I saw his name in a friend's address book, and I asked if I could copy it into mine. Not that I'd ever call him up. I just like seeing it there."
For years after that, I carried around Cary Grant's phone number in my address book too. This time around, though, when I got to the "G"s, I decided it was time to let Cary Grant go.
And there are so many more: A typewriter repairman. (No doubt he's had to find other employment; I certainly don't need him anymore.) A woman I met on a balloon ride I took with my younger son. She owned a roller skating rink in Idaho and said, "If you're ever in the neighborhood, come on by and skate." Naturally I wrote down her name and address.
Why am I still carrying around the number of the man who used to give me mandolin lessons, or the phone number and hours of a rink in Brattleboro, Vermont where I once studied figure skating? This time around, I will finally give up recopying the number of my former sister in law -- once close as a sister to me, I used to say -- who hasn't spoken to me since my divorce from her husband's brother? Likewise, there is probably no point in copying over the entry that reads, simply, "Mr. Wilson," with a telephone number beside it and the word "hay."
It takes me a moment to remember Mr. Wilson. He owned a tractor with a mowing attachment. And there was a time when I lived on a piece of land with fields that needed mowing every August. I could pass this number on to my ex-husband, who lives on that piece of land without me now. No matter. He has probably long since made other arrangements.
Casual acquaintances and crushing losses, they're all recorded in the same three line entries. Plumber, electrician, housepainter, lawyer, lover. There's the name of a friend who died of AIDS a few years back, and the name of a boy who used to cut my lawn, killed in a car accident at nineteen. I remember how, for a year after my mother's death, I couldn't bring myself to erase the message on her chalkboard: "Buy Phantom tickets," and how long it took me to open and use the last jar of the peach chutney she'd put up, the last summer she was well. I feel a similar stab of loss, when I get to the name of someone who's died since the last time I made an address book. As long as I still saw their names in my book, they felt like part of my world. Now there can be no doubt. When a person no longer possesses telephone number or address, she definitely won't be back.
Tonight I will finish copying names into my new address book. It's a great feeling of accomplishment a person gets, when she's done this. For a little while, anyway, my life -- as defined in this book -- will look so orderly. Every name in black ink, with no crossouts. No scribbled notes in the margins. No painful memories remaining. But I also know, from long experience, that not every name that's in my book today will still be in my book, five years from now. The other part of the story is that there are some names I don't even know yet, that I will be writing down in the months and years to come. I buy blank pages for my new address book, in anticipation of this fortunate fact of life. And luckily, a few of the old standbys always stick around. I know their names and addresses so well I don't really need to write them down, but I do anyway. I like to see them as I turn the pages. I like knowing my name's in their books too.
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