Today, I found this.
It was not in Lee Benson's book nor in any of my books on FDR; it is not on my dad's business letterhead and does not implore me to pray to God. It is brief and handwritten in blue, as I remembered. It
does directly refer to the year at MIT, when I had gotten the Benson book, which I had remembered the note doing circumstantially. I was reasonably confident the Dad Note of my memory, the one imploring me to pray to God when I was down, was written during that year. This note is the correct size to that of the Dad Note of my memory, it
had been folded, as a business letter is in two directions; it was unfolded as I would have done had I discovered it, as I remembered, while sitting on the toilet and reading Benson's book; the edges were sharp as I remembered, so much so that when I tried to refold the note today I heard the paper crack. I
did discover it today in my family papers where I thought I may have put the Dad Note of my memory after finding it in Benson's book while sitting on the toilet. But it was not
together with my other family papers in the closet off the bathroom. It was in a photo album that I noticed today on top of one of my book shelves, an album so long untouched that when I took it down it had one-half to one inch of dust on it,
as if I had deliberately put the note there and separated the album from my other family papers so that I would remember what I had done with it, which I didn't.
It beats the airline ticket alternative. A few months ago I was again referencing Benson's book (I need to throw that mother fucker away.) when I found an old airline ticket between the pages. So old that the ink on the coated fax machine-like paper had faded into illegibility. The airline ticket also was of a size that it fit between the pages of Benson's book without sticking out and it went unnoticed by me, and by my son, in multiple leafings through and exasperated shakings of Benson's book to see if the Dad Note of my memory, of God, of the toilet, would fall out; the airline ticket was so thin that it went undiscovered for years of leafings and shakings but the airline ticket did not implore me to pray to God. But nor does this one, the one discovered today, although it does invoke MIT and Pitt which I could be said, of a fashion, to worship as godlike, so it beats the airline ticket is all. Is there a second note from dad, one that does not apotheosize MIT or Pitt but invokes the real thing and implores me to pray to Him when I am "down"? I think it highly unlikely that there are, or were, two dad notes. Therefore, to a standard of more likely than not I believe that this is the Dad Note of my memory misremembered.
