Yate Butler's Five

Somehow I became the family correspondent. In the early years of our marriage I not only kept in touch with my friends and our friends, but also Spouse's friends. Such as Yate Butler, a lankly English major and for a time, a college  rommate of Spouse's. Our correspondence began in the days before keeping in touch became so quick and accessible with emails and cell phones.

Today Yate and I continue a snail mail correspondence by choice. His letters to us, written in a beautiful, flowing handwriting, are on recycled 8 x 11 paper, and are never short. Content is the best, as Yate writes vividly of his life raising five daughters––five girls with four names apiece. I have saved his letters in a folder labeled "Letters from Yate." Someday I'll send them back to him and he can write his book.

And write he can, as he describes with great flair life with his girls. He has raised them single-handedly since his wife, their mother, died an untimely death when the youngest weren't yet in school. Yate chose to live in a small town near his mother, so the girls could have a feminine influence. His "painted lady" victorian-style house is not far off the main road, and is filled with antiques, fine china, and family heirlooms.  His girls were raised with grace and have become lovely young women, each one very  much her own person. Some remind us of their mom, some have their dad's unique outlook on life, and some are just a good combination of them both. 

I got wind that another letter is on its way to us. When it arrives, its time to sit down with a cup of tea and read the next chapter of the Butler Five. It's something to look forward to, and then, to remember.