I often question why I save letters. I have little notes my husband wrote to me when we first started dating, cards my father sent to me while I was in boarding school (my favorite one says “I picked this one just for you” with a little girl picking her nose on the cover), letters from camp, and letters from my grandfather tucked away in the cookbooks he left to me when he passed. Little did he know I’d grow up to be incapable of making tuna fish. I digress – after reading Vanessa Manko’s piece in New York Times Magazine titled “Forgotten Postcards From Mexico City,” I remembered why. The letters and notes are threads from the past to the future – like breadcrumbs on a website. You cannot get lost if you look back from whence you came every now and then.

An excerpt from “Forgotten Postcards from Mexico City”:

“…The letters from my grandfather give voice to the man I’d long imagined; they reveal a man haunted by memories of his family…”