It was a contemplative type of day. First there had been sunshine and then rain. Next there was sun again, and then a shower, but this time the sun edged the cloud. It was a day to think deep thoughts. She sat at the kitchen counter doing that introspective thinking. She wanted to write something profound about life, but her heart caused her mind to wander. She began to think about the role of writing in her life and then realized that writing has had a profound affect on her life.
Her husband wrote letters from Viet Nam. He wrote faithfully, almost daily. There wasnÍt much he could or would tell about being a communication specialist in a conflict involving people who couldnÍt communicate. He would write about funny little things that someone said or did. He would write about the warm China Sea and tell of taking pictures under water using a bread bag over his camera. He would share his deep emotional thoughts about how he felt about her and what the future might hold. The history of their courtship, before the writing, had been going here-and-there, discussing what they had seen and done. Sensual awareness had often usurped speech. Now, parted by distance, they could only caress in expression. His letter s brought an added dimension to their relationship as he spoke from the inner man. Writing was where it began.
She had been a college coed, a senior. She wrote sporadically. There were plenty of activities in her daily life. Hers was a light, fun, carefree existence. Her stress was an unfinished assignment or a comprehensive exam; nothing life or death in her academic sphere. She was captured by reality only when the packets of letters would arrive. His postal service was unreliable and the daily letters would pile up, arriving in bunches. Her conscience was pricked as she wondered if he was waiting and how he felt if her weekly epistle wouldnÍt make that mail call. She imagined him waiting expectantly for the next time when a slim packet of one or two letters would arrive.
Her heart thoughts d rifted off further. She still kept her love letters in the long, skinny florist box that had sheltered the roses he had wired her on her twenty-second birthday. She wondered if that is how it had been for her parents. She wished that before they had died she had gotten the cigar box of letters. There is much she would have asked them. Did the old cigar box holding her parents love notes have any significance? It didnÍt seem likely. In the hard times of the 1930Ís the box would merely be a convenient, sturdy container. Her heart wondered if the words from her fatherÍs CCC Camp were the ones that built the loving relationship that would last almost sixty years. Most of the letters were written by her father. Was her mother busy with her work and social life, flitting arou ûnd carefree? He wrote of mundane activities such as being trained to drive the trucks. Did they have any inkling that the skill would lead to forty-five years on the road? Was writing where their deep commitment began?
She tried to pull herself back to the present. Before she left her reverie she bestowed a blessing on each of her three children, the future generation. ñMay you meet a mate that you will have to correspond with before you decide if you are committed.î They could be the next scribes of the family.
As she managed to come to the present, at the counter again, she looked at her surroundings. Here she is with the man she has loved for 30 years. They now are able to share their every thought with each other. Yet writing had been the beginning of this close relationship and of the generation before . Was there anything still to be told in writing? Writing was what it was all about.