A little closure

When a man and woman develop a close relationship primarily through their correspondence, where will the relationship go? A. R. Gurney's play, "Love Letters," now performed at Brown County Playhouse in Nashville, Ind., pursues this question. Interesting topic. One Sunday afternoon, I drove to our neighbor town to see it. \nIn the play, the only exchange between the characters (Andy and Melissa) is their letter correspondence. There is no actual dialogue in the entire play, each correspondence is performed by one's reading of his or her letter to the other. When Andy began to read aloud what he wrote, acting as if he was writing, Melissa, a moment later, began to read that letter silently. When Andy's letter was over, Melissa began to write her response, reading it aloud while writing it. This series of correspondences was so vividly performed that it sounded like a dialogue. I enjoyed the play. \nThe play covers its characters' adolescence to their late 50s (early 1940s to early 1980s). The majority of the audience was in the similar generation of the characters (now their 70s). That is also my mother's generation. She has been teaching English in Japan for a long time. She must love this play. I wish I had a chance to take her to the playhouse to see it. \nIn the first part of the play, Andy and Melissa were both in school, but in the second part, they graduated. Andy joined the Navy, writing from all over the world. Melissa began to pursue her art in Italy. Correspondence began to cross the oceans. "Konichiwa Ohayo gozaimasu …" a part of Andy's letter from Japan was read in Japanese, my native language, which made me smile. Then, "Hey, you! Rumor has it you are hooked up with some little Jap bar girl out there ... " Melissa's angry letter followed. "Jap!" My smiling face was slapped by that remark. It hurt ... momentarily, as if I were kicked out of the play ... but soon I went back into the play; Andy and Melissa's world of correspondence developed into more complicated relationship. \nThe play ends with Melissa's death and Andy's long letter to her mother about their relationship. When the play was over, I saw tears in the audience's eyes. Tears also began to fill my eyes. It was a great play and I was deeply moved by it. But I also began to have a problem with my satisfaction. On my way home, my encounter with "Jap" in the play started bothering me. It didn't go away. Do I still want to take my mother to this play? \nWhen someone throws some bad word at me, say, some drunken bunch from the car window when they pass me on an empty street, the word hurts me, though it doesn't bother me for long. They know they did a wrong thing. I simply raise my middle finger at them, at least, in my mind. Then it's over. \nBut this time, it's not over. I can't raise my finger at this play that moved me so much. Neither can I shun Melissa nor the actress who plays her. Probably no one in the play meant to hurt my feelings with the word "Jap." It was not the play's intention, just one short remark on the periphery -- probably not even memorable to many of those who love that play. \nHowever, "the word" is there. It still hurts. Post-modern colonialism? I don't know. I'm still working on it. Not for the sake of political correctness but for my own little closure. \nDon't I deserve that?\nAnd you?