by Jerramy Fine
Anyway, when I mentioned Peter Phillips, the Foreign Office woman seemed almost pleased that I even knew he existed. Still, she remained stern and professional and wasn’t about to give away any information that she shouldn’t. She suggested that I write to any member of the Royal family courtesy of Buckingham Palace and assured me that it would be delivered. She gave me the address and postcode; I happily thanked her and managed to find my seat on the conference bus moments before roll call was taken and we headed toward our next stop at the Supreme Court. I breathed a sigh of relief. Royal address attained. Mission accomplished.
Back home in Colorado, I spent my summer days working at the local bookstore. Yes, believe it or not, my country bumpkin town actually had a bookstore—and as I slowly outgrew the minuscule local library, it became a place of refuge for me. With its soft normal carpeting, soft normal music, free coffee, and free cookies, that bookstore was the polar opposite of my family’s crazy farmhouse (where cookies were never allowed unless they contained both wheat germ and carob).
Between the ages of nine and fourteen, I was reading up to three or four books per week. This was mainly because my parents finally broke down and bought a television, and the rule was that I had to read a full book for every half hour that I watched it. The second rule was that I had to mute all the commercials so I wouldn’t be brainwashed into wanting products that I didn’t need.
When I started reading nothing but Sweet Valley High and The Baby-sitters Club, my parents decided that sugary teenage books didn’t count and that I had to read a literary “classic” for every half hour of television. My mom created elaborate (and oddly draconian) charts for my brother and me to keep track of all this. All I know is that suddenly I was plowing through Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë as fast as I could—just so I could watch a measly hour of Saturday morning cartoons.
Anyway, I was in the local bookstore so often as a child, that the own er offered to hire me—and pay me in books. And when I was old enough to work for actual money, I realized I had landed the best summer job in town. While my peers worked in McDonald’s or Wal-Mart (or roped cattle on someone’s ranch), I was able to help the area elite with their literary purchases and I relished every second of it.
I remember pleading desperately with my parents that same summer to let me legally change my name to something girly and English—like Gwendolen or Cecily. (I clearly had just finished reading The Importance of Being Earnest). But more than anything, I remember sitting in my backyard and drafting the perfect letter to Peter.
It was quite tricky, actually. I didn’t want it to sound like a love letter—that would come later. Rather, my plan was for us to be friends first. A few months as harmless pen pals perhaps—then the glorious romance could begin. So I had to sound fascinating enough for him to want to write me back—but on the other hand, I had to be careful not to sound so eager and interested in his life that I came across as some kind of crazy royal fanatic. Like I said, it was tricky.
I agonized over whether the letter should be typed or written in cursive, done in blue or black ink, with a fountain pen or a ballpoint. I experimented with all kinds of stationery, pondered the pros and cons of scenting it with perfume, and sifted through hundreds of photographs until I found one to send him that made me look sweet, pretty, and ever so slightly regal. I spent weeks and weeks working on it, crumpling up one draft after another. I so wish I had a copy of the letter that I finally mailed so I could tell you exactly what I wrote in the end, but alas, it was written by hand and I never thought of Xeroxing it for posterity.
I do remember wondering how to skirt the family issue. I wasn’t about to tell my future husband that my parents still thought life was one giant Woodstock concert. Instead I wrote something about how my mother was Canadian and my father was from New York City—that way they sounded almost cosmopolitan and I was able to slip a Commonwealth reference in at the same time. Like me, the royals loved all things canine, so I made sure to mention my beloved dog, Jasper, as much as possible. I discussed Colorado in terms of world-class ski resorts and sprawling scenic ranches—as if the state was one giant alternative Switzerland instead of a place bursting with gun shows and goat-ropings. I remember focusing on how Peter and I were the same age and how fascinated I was with England and how wouldn’t it be lovely if we could be transatlantic pen pals?
Once it was mailed, I felt confident that I was in command of my own destiny and that my life would finally start moving in the right direction. Soon, my prince and I would be happily corresponding. Soon after that we would inevitably meet up in a very romantic location, which would be followed by a starry-eyed courtship, a lengthy engagement and at last, a magnificent royal wedding, quite possibly without the hippies in attendance. As ever, I knew it was only a matter of time.
My parents, on the other hand, weren’t so sure. They were increasingly worried about my incessant interest in royalty with its inherent class system and trappings of material wealth.
“The best thing that could happen to you, Jerramy,” my mother would repeatedly tell me, “would be for you to fall in love with a homeless man. That’s what you need to bring you back down to earth.”
And I became increasingly worried that if I actually brought home a homeless man and announced that he was my new boyfriend, they would be overjoyed.
Every day, I walked the long length of the driveway from our farm house to our mailbox to see if Peter had replied. Jasper, my darling and devoted golden retriever (and quite frankly the only family member I could ever actually relate to) always came with me on those walks.
Like it was yesterday, I remember opening the little silver door of the mailbox one Saturday afternoon and pulling out the pile of mail—bills, Mother Jones magazine, the local newspaper with story after story about livestock, and, oh my God—there it was. It had hardly been two weeks! How could he have replied so quickly?
My address was neatly typed on the featherweight envelope. It had a blue airmail sticker in one corner and the postmark was from Buckingham Palace. From Buckingham Palace! For a long time, I just stood there. Holding the envelope and staring at the postmark. My heart thudded in my chest and the rural landscape swam around me as my mind spun with an overwhelming sense of destiny.
I almost wasn’t brave enough to open it. It was much, much worse than when I had to open letters from Cornell or Georgetown a few years later to see if I’d been accepted. Because it mattered so much more.
Like the wonderful companion that he was, Jasper sat at my heels, patiently waiting to see what I would do next.
“Jasper,” I whispered, “my prince has finally written to me.”
His big brown eyes widened and he panted a wide smile back at me, full of moral support. At least Jasper didn’t want me to marry a homeless man. If only my family understood me half as much as he did.
I walked slowly back to the house, mustering the courage to face what ever I might find inside that royal envelope. Jasper grabbed a stick with his mouth and ran the length of the driveway and back again before he realized a game was hopeless. Lost in my own world, I sat down in a wicker rocking chair in the front lawn and Jasper sprawled euphorically on the grass beside me. I carefully opened the envelope, took a deep breath, and pulled out a beautiful sheet of watermarked stationery.
Buckingham Palace
27 September 1993
Dear Jerramy,
The Princess Royal has asked me to write to thank you for your letter to Peter. I have been asked to send Her Royal Highness’s best wishes.
Yours Sincerely,
The Hon. xxx xxxxx
Assistant Private Secretary to HRH The Princess Royal
I must have read that letter a hundred times, refusing to believe it. There had to be more than a response from his mother’s assistant secretary! There had to be! From the looks of it, Peter hadn’t even been given the chance to read my letter! The perfect letter that I worked so hard on! How could this have happened? How could I not h
ave foreseen this happening? The reality of my own naiveté hit me like a blow to the stomach and I trembled in an attempt to stop the tears.
It was going to be more challenging than I ever, ever realized.
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring up into the blue sky, looking for answers. But after many deep breaths, I dried my eyes and regained my composure. I wasn’t about to let this minor obstacle stop me. The only reason Peter didn’t write back was because he didn’t even know I had written to him! So I couldn’t judge myself, or him, too harshly. I would just find some other way of making contact.
Once school started up again, I tried to take my mind off the whole princess thing. I took the dreaded ACT and SAT, joined the tennis team and the debate team, marched in the homecoming parade, and went to prom. (Chloe set me up with a very cute guy that could talk about nothing but Jesus and the military.)
Like a robot, I went through all the motions of any well-rounded American girl preparing for college. All these activities served as a welcome distraction, but my need to be in England never left me. Despite my attempts to ignore it or pretend I couldn’t hear what the little voice inside me was saying, I knew I would never be able to keep it quiet. It was always there, forever repeating to me that England was where I must go.
Then one day, I saw the poster: 6TH–12TH-GRADE STUDENTS INTERESTED IN WEEKLONG EDUCATIONAL TRIP TO EN GLAND, PLEASE MEET ON TUESDAY AT 7 P.M. INFORMATION PACKS AVAILABLE IN THE MAIN OFFICE. Considering most of the kids I went to school with could benefit from a weeklong educational trip anywhere outside of our tiny town, I was in shock. I could not believe my cowboy school was even thinking of offering something so worldly and wonderful!
I ran to the office, got myself an information pack, and read every word. From Shakespeare plays at Stratford-Upon-Avon to the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, the trip covered everything I’d been dying to see. But not surprisingly, it was expensive. It would require begging my parents and grandparents for a loan. Still, I wasn’t daunted. I would find the money somehow even if it meant babysitting every night of the week.
My parents came with me to that Tuesday night interest meeting to gather more details on who exactly would be accompanying me across the Atlantic. But when we arrived at the classroom it was practically empty. Out of the entire county school district, only one other person (a boy) was interested in this amazing once-in-a-lifetime trip to England. The two sponsoring teachers and four parents waited in silence another thirty minutes while the boy and I eyed each other with embarrassment. Finally, it was decided that only two students would not be worth the effort and the trip was declared canceled.
Perfect. Another door to my destiny slammed in my face. Was I ever going to make it to England?
At least Mike (the aforementioned boy) and I became friends. Mike was a year younger than me and even though I never say this about boys, he was a good ten times smarter than me. And to my utter astonishment, he thought my insane parents were amusing rather than terrifying.
Once Mike came over and ended up discussing Pink Floyd with my dad for hours. All the while I was worried to death of what he would think of me when he saw my house filled with all kinds of weird antiques, Guatemalan cushions, bizarre modern art sculptures, my dad’s enormous paintings of indigenous people, the wall-to-wall hysterically patterned carpet that used to be in a 1930s movie theater that my parents found abandoned in a Denver alleyway, and the room that my mom decided to paint bright purple so it would look like a “Santa Fe sunset.”
But shockingly, Mike loved it.
“Jerramy, your house is great!” he told me. “No stairs—it’s perfect for parties!”
Those last years of high school weren’t so bad once I learned that my peers would still speak to me after stepping inside what was essentially a hippie-fied carnival fun house. And I guess there was one good thing about having hippie parents: As a teenager, I found that it was downright impossible to horrify them. And with this realization I started doing things that no one else my age would be allowed to do in a million years.
I was the only one in town allowed to throw “coed slumber parties” and my parents insisted if my friends were too drunk to drive home, or too afraid to face their parents after missing a curfew, they could always stay the night at our house (or in the tipi or the tree house or the root cellar).
Personally, I possessed a very puritan view toward drugs and alcohol—probably because my parents didn’t hesitate to share their past experiences, in detail, with me on everything from LSD to opium. So although I adored playing the perfect social hostess, I never smoked or drank a thing. And I guess that’s one thing that horrified the parents, or at least puzzled them. That and the time I entered the Miss Teen Colorado pageant6 without telling them. I have to admit that didn’t go down particularly well either. Especially with the bra-burning feminist mother.
When I was in junior high, my mother made us have a family fire drill to practice escaping the farm house in case it ever went up in flames. But when the alarm sounded, instead of running straight to the front door as I’d been told, I threw open my closet, grabbed armfuls of my beloved clothes, and tossed them out my bedroom window—hangers and all.
“How could you put the safety of your clothes before the safety of your own life?” my mom demanded angrily. But to me, one didn’t exist without the other.
Until Wal-Mart took over, for years the only places to buy clothes in our Podunk town were a small ranchwear boutique that catered to wealthy tourists and a store that offered about a billion styles of cowboy boots. Other than that, you were free to place orders from the Sears catalog just like you could if you were a rural farmer back in 1886.
But clearly none of this mattered one bit to my parents because their idea of shopping was rummaging through boxes at The Salvation Army and their idea of fashion was still stuck somewhere between Haight-Ashbury and the Summer of Love.
“Jerramy, what do you think I should wear to my job interview?” my mom would ask me.
“Um, how about not the batik skirt covered with feathers,” I’d tell her.
My dad was even worse. I once bought him a brand-new button-down shirt for Father’s Day. He took one look at it, sneered at the pristine packaging, and returned it the very next day. Still, I was desperate to inject at least one item of clothing into his wardrobe that I approved of, so I waited a few weeks, went back to the store, and bought the same shirt again. Except this time I took off the tags, crumpled it into ball, put it in an old plastic bag, and told him I’d found it at The Salvation Army. Now he wears it all the time.
Clearly, when it came to fashion, I had no living role models—only my precious books and magazines—and so, like everything in my life, I set about teaching myself. I was about fifteen years old when I abandoned contemporary eighties trends and decided to pattern my wardrobe after Grace Kelly and Jacqueline Kennedy. True, they were somewhat before my time—but wasn’t everything? Feeling I was born into the wrong era was hardly a new sensation! To me, these two magnificent women represented the absolute pinnacle of ladylike sophistication. And as a young girl stranded in the style abyss of the Rocky Mountains, I quickly took them on as my personal fashion mentors.
Admittedly, attaining their timeless style and impeccable grooming was rather difficult when I lived in the middle of nowhere and six hours away from something as basic as a Gap. But over time, my wardrobe began filling up with as many Grace and Jackie essentials as I could afford: sleeveless A-lines, three-quarter-length sleeves, pleated skirts, cashmere twin sets, bejeweled cardigans, coats with oversize buttons, and more cocktail dresses than I knew what to do with. Jewelry? Only pearls. Heels? Always. And if it were still acceptable to wear white gloves every day, believe me, I would.
What I loved so much about Grace and Jackie was the regal quality that permeated their personal style and the regal demeanor that allowed them to carry it off. The fact that one became a princess in real life, and the other became the Qu
een of Camelot is no coincidence. They had dressed for their destinies and their destinies had been fulfilled.
I had every intention of doing the same.
High school seemed to move in geological time, but luckily the promise of college loomed before me. Accustomed to helping kids join the military or apply to local vocational and agricultural schools, my guidance counselor didn’t have the faintest idea what to do with me when I told her I wanted to go to school out of state. So essentially, I was left alone with my college applications.
I had the required GPA, high test scores, and a résumé filled with the requisite clubs, teams, and token charity work. That stuff was easy. The hard part was the essay. It had to be eloquent, poignant, and most of all, brilliantly unique. Finally, I decided to write about my letter to Peter. I knew it was risky (other students were writing about lessons learned through raising prize-winning hogs), but I hoped that such an unconventional topic would get the attention of admission boards—and that the story of seeking out but failing to contact my prince would show my resourcefulness, my resilience, and my unshakable dedication.
It worked. I’d applied to several prestigious colleges across the east coast and received partial scholarships to them all. But when it came time to choose between them, it boiled down to one factor and one factor only: their study-abroad programs in England.
In the end, I chose the University of Rochester in upstate New York—not only did it have a very English name, but it ranked highly in political science, had fantastic study-abroad options, and best of all, you couldn’t get much farther from Colorado without crossing the ocean. I was so close to escaping that blasted cow town I could hardly contain myself. All that was left between me and deliverance was the six-hour car ride to the Denver airport. And I only barely survived that with my sanity intact.