The Eighteen Letters Project
I realized that I didn’t want to just print out the letters and hand Hudson a stack of paper. I needed to find a bindery. The woman I ended up working with seemed a little disorganized but very passionate. I knew that she was the one the minute I walked into her cramped lair on Melrose, her lunch in Tupperware containers on a big, crowded drafting table, because her personality seemed to be an exact reflection of her website’s appointment policy: “Please call for an appointment, but walk-ins are usually fine.” Charlene had an initially huffy, don’t-you-know-who-I-am tone, but then she smiled, the entire façade collapsed, and she was happy to do whatever I wanted. I could relate. I usually lay out a big or controversial opinion, but if someone has a better idea, or just wants to do it a different way, I’m totally fine with it, like an extremely opinionated pushover.
Charlene suggested a Japanese stab binding in which several holes are made in the front and back covers and then thread is sewn through the holes, binding the pages and leaving an exposed spine. We spent some time choosing the right thread. She showed me waxed and polished linen thread in addition to embroidery thread in beautiful, rich colors. I knew that my son would love the tactile, handmade aesthetic of the stab binding, but it is fragile. In the end, I decided on a more traditional bound book—I wanted a chance for it to last. We chose a speckly, nubby, light-blue linen cover with black endpapers and a magenta bookmark ribbon. Charlene proposed debossing his initials on the cover. I worried that he might think that was cheesy, and declined. She said, “Great, because we absolutely don’t have time to monogram.”
Charlene told me that she began bookbinding more than thirty years ago, mostly so that she could get into book repair, which is what she really loves. I liked the idea that if you make something good, then it becomes something worth taking care of, thereby imbuing it with longevity. And when, inevitably, it gets beat up by use and by life, you get it repaired. I hoped that we were making something good, something to steward through time, through readings and rereadings, the wear of love.
When I picked up the book, a week later, she said, gruffly, in a Fran Lebowitz voice, “Look, I hope you don’t mind, but I read a little bit of it. I mean, come on. Really, really cool.” I thanked her and said that my son would love what she had made. It felt as if we were two people in the same business. She conserved memories; I documented them.
The night before Hudson’s birthday, we had a party at the house, and a few of his close friends—Viggo, Jhianna, and Sabine—spent the night. The next morning, his actual birthday, I was slightly disappointed that other people would be there. Should I wait until they had gone? Nah, I thought. I’ve waited eighteen years! I made my usual Dutch baby for the crew, and when they were finished eating I told Hudson that I wanted to give him his “big present.” As soon as I said “big present,” I regretted it. THIS is the big present? A book? Of LETTERS? I worried, irrationally (they’re nice kids), that one of his friends might ruin the whole shebang with a horrible teen-ager comment, like “Where’s your real present?”
Viggo, Jhianna, and Sabine gathered around the table to watch him open it. I was weird-crying. “What is my problem?” I kept saying, while realizing that his friends had no idea what my problem was. I held the wrapped book in my hands, trying to give it some context before he opened it. Maybe I was crying because of the physical release of a long buildup, maybe I was crying because it meant so much to me, or maybe I was crying because finishing the project meant finishing his childhood.
It was a piece of writing that was so different from anything I had ever written. I had worked on it at any point in the year when I felt lost, when I felt discouraged by Hollywood, when I didn’t know how I would pay the rent, when I couldn’t face other stuff. It became a testament to something larger, a goal, an act of service, a habit that walked me to where I needed to be. I did it when I wanted to get details down before I forgot them—funny things Hudson said, things we did together, observations of who he was as he grew and changed.
