Book Review - Marian Henley's The Shiniest Jewel

Marian Henley’s The Shiniest Jewel is a graphic memoir similar in style to Craig Thompson’s Blankets. Published by Springboard Press, Jewel is touching, real, sad, sweet and honest. Henley's drawings as well as her words tell the story of an emotional journey through a time of great change in her life. The book centers around the process of adopting a child from Russia but also follows Henley as she copes with the loss of her father, the milestone of turning 50 and the marriage to her long-time partner. Henley deals with themes of death, grief, commitment, motherhood, father/daughter issues and waiting with a delicate and refined sense of humor. Reading the book in its graphic form is a bit like watching a movie. I actually had to read it through twice to fully delve into everything Henley had to say with this work. The pictures and imagery tell one story and add balance, metaphor and significance when needed. But text is also important in moving the narrative along, and the first time reading it I was enthralled with the story line and what the outcome would be. Her use of a cartoon version of the heart to represent the emotional “heart” was a very successful element running through the novel.

Henley is a cartoonist best know for her dry, comedic character “Maxine!” The Shiniest Jewel is a departure from her cartooning in both tone and style her fans will most likely not expect what they find when they pick it up. I was pleasantly surprised by it, however, and hope we see more in the graphic novel genre from her in the future.

Letter #3: Ft. Myers, FL, April 18, 1945

He asks if she can cook. He jokes with her saying, "I ought to know before I marry you, at least."

Tate is funny. He comes across on the page so sweet without even the tiniest bit of sarcasm. He describes how the Florida rain soaked his tent and all of his clothes but that his clothes remained dry - and he was thankful for that.

The anecdotes he shares with my grandmother range from descriptions of the weather (hot and rainy) to what he is eating (stuffed peppers that were delicious) to what is going on in his family (his cousin had a baby). Some are tender and some are hilarious, like the story of the guy in the bunk above him dreaming he was drowning only to wake up and realize he had wet the bed. Tate's reaction? Thank God they have thick mattresses, or he might have dreamed it was raining!

His sense of humor is just so honest and simple. I am trying to think about anyone I know now who sounds like him, has his kind and honest tone when telling such a gross story. No doubt that if this story was told now, there would be some exaggeration, mockery and filth added in for effect. Is this simply my grandfather's personality or is it the innocence of the time period?

One thing is for sure - he communicates sincerely and lovingly how much he missed Lynn. He is not afraid to open his heart to her on paper, miles and miles between them.

I wonder how she felt each time a letter came in the mail, what that moment before she slipped open the envelope felt like each time?

Letter #2: Ft. Myers FL, April 16, 1945

Tate begins every letter with "Dearest Lynn." The absence of a possessive pronoun suggests not that she is only his dearest, but dearest of all.

This letter opens with unabashed joy: "Hello Darling, I am sitting on top of the world, I got a letter from the girl I love tonight and it sure was wonderful." He continues on to talk about how he read the letter hundreds of times, that he even brought it to the mess hall, that he was worried he might wear it out.

It is such a simple thing, a letter. A piece of paper, a pen, a few thoughts, pennies to send. And it brought him such joy.

I think about the days before email when my best friend moved from New Hampshire across the country to Colorado. We wrote letters. I remember getting a little bubble of excitement when a letter would come, something specially addressed to me. You could always tell it was a letter from Theresa from her characteristic funky handwriting, script she still writes with today. Sometimes the letters would be on notebook paper, sometimes a postcard. One time she even sent a handmade card she had made with paper and fabric. Another friend who moved to California kept up communication through snail mail - again, it was always a suprise to find what she wrote on as well as what she wrote about. There is a delight in physically opening a letter that cannot be decribed. It is exciting to received emails - and I still do get a little buzz of excitment when I see emails in my inbox or a comment on my MySpace. But there really is nothing like a handwritten letter. It is permanent, tangible. As tangible as thoughts and feelings and emotions can ever really be.

It occurs to me that I don't have my grandmother's letters to my grandfather. I will never know exactly what she wrote to him, how she conveyed her love to him, the words she used, what her handwriting looked like. I wonder what happened to them - did he lose them, misplace them, were they destroyed?

So, maybe the tangible isn't always as permanent as we would like to think. Maybe her words are out there still or maybe they have always been with him, a part of his heart. Maybe just the act of writing down your feelings is enough to make the feeling real forever, even if it disintegrates, burns or vanishes into cybersace.

Letter # 1: Ft. Myers FL, April 15, 1945

I have a feeling these are not in order. I am tempted to pull them all out of the box and reorganize them by date. But then, this is how my grandmother left them - stuffed tightly into a bright yellow Disney Tigger photo memory box. I am hesitant to mess with them, even touching them seems invasive. When I open the box for the first time, I breathe in the mustiness of old paper, like an ancient library book. It reminds me of being up in the stacks in college, pouring through novels and literary criticism in its original form. Emails do not have a scent.

I pull out the first letter and inspect the envelope first. It was sent via airmail to "Miss Marilyn Jewett, 220 Ashley Street, Hartford, Connecticut." An air mail stamp cost 8 cents - it is green with a picture of a plane on it. The envelope is not a special air mail one (with the red and blue stripes) but my grandfather wrote "air mail" on it twice in print, underlined two times. He addressed the envelope in cursive writing.

Ah, cursive writing - a slowly diminishing art form. I don't know anyone who writes in script anymore. So when I open the first letter, pulling out the thin, delicate pages and see that my grandfather has scrawled his letters in messy script, I realize that it will be a challenge at first to read them. As I decipher the first one, it almost feels as if I am translating them. Plus, the order of the pages is odd, so it is difficult to read the words in order, as he wrote them.

But I persevere. And I learn a few things. He missed being able to drink 2 quarts of milk a day (they were only allowed 8 oz.). He missed partying. He thought if she gained 15-20 lbs. she would "slay them" but loved her just the way she was. He was sad because he hadn't received any letters from her and two from his mother. He missed my grandmother terribly and was very lonely.

He called her "Lynn." I have never heard her called anything but Marilyn, so this comes as a bit of a surprise at first, and it sets in - these letters were written before I was born, before my mother was born, before any of my aunts and uncles were born. They are letters written by a man formally called C.W. Libby to a young woman he called "Lynn." He signed every letter "Tate." Suddenly, these are not my grandparents but two young lovers separated from each other...Lynn and Tate....

Love Letters

So, it is entirely too obvious that I have not posted in a very long time. A lot has happened during that time but I won't attempt to do any sort of recap - it would be overwhelming to write and to read, for sure.

One important thing worth mentioning - I had a baby. His name is Aidan and he is the love of my life. The past six months have been a winding road of challenges, joys and inspirations I never could have imagined. It has been a wild ride and I am so grateful for what life has given me and my husband.

The main reason I'm back online, however, is not to write about the path of pregnancy, pain of delivery and what it's like to create life (although I'm sure these things will find their way into my posts as they have changed the way I look at the world in many ways).

The reason I am back is a box of letters. It is sitting on my kitchen table as we speak. It contains nearly 100 love letters written to my grandmother from my grandfather while he was in bootcamp. They recently came into my possession after my grandmother's passing. My aunt thought, if anybody, maybe I could "do something" with them.

Well, the first thing I am going to do is try and read them - and anyone who has a child under the age of one knows that sitting down to read even the newspaper is a feat of skill and daring. But these are my grandmother's love letters. And something is telling me they deserve to be read and that maybe there is a story in there waiting to be told.

I will be reading the letters and reflecting on them here. I was going to create a new blog but changed my mind - how much more delicious can you get in the world of words than an actual primary source?