with love, your son
There's this box of letters I've been putting off going through for six years now. It's primarily letters to my grandparents from my dad from when he first joined the Air Force through his tour in Viet Nam.
I've wanted to read them. But I knew it would be an emotional experience. So, I kept saying later. Not now. Some day.
I've been using some of Spring Break to unpack and repack a lot of boxes I've kept in one of the two spare bedrooms (my house is too big for me) the last six months. It went from being the storage room to the junk room.
Anyway, yesterday I was grabbing this box of letters off the top shelf in the closet to move to another spot. But I dropped it. The lid came off. The letters went crashing all over the floor.
And I spent the next four hours in a flashback to 1965-1969. With a few jumps into 1977 when my dad spent some time on TDY in Germany.
It was quite an experience, reading them. My dad wrote me e-mails from time to time. But they were short and to the point. Sometimes he'd be mad at me about something I forgot to do, or he'd tell me something he didn't want my mom to overhear him talking about on the phone. Usually, though, it was a quick question about something on his computer or what did I want from the commissary. We talked on the phone most of the time.
So hearing this "letter writing voice" from him was different. Add to that he was 20-24 in that first set of letters; 32 in the last. Youth. And the letters were primarily to his parents, so there's that. He was writing as a son, not a dad.
I saw so much of me in them. The way I talk about things before I actually talk about them--all my precursors. He talked about how he'd put off doing things he was afraid he wouldn't like and then find out he liked them after all and would kick himself for the time wasted. The way he didn't like change so much.
In the first part of May 1966 he's talking about this girl he was taking out that was 6'2" and how he was afraid she didn't like how short he was (5'8"). Then mid May 1966 he went out with a girl who was a little too wild for him and won't ask her out again. The next letter is the first of July 1966 and he's telling them how he's serious about this girl named Judy he's been dating for six weeks and thinks he might be in-love. That was my mom.
My then-gentile mom. And so that's when the arguments started. I don't have the letters my grandparents wrote to him, but he quotes them from time to time and I felt my blood pressure rise.
And then there's one letter he wrote to my mom. August 1966. He went back home to see his parents and friends for two weeks. It was the first time they were apart. He talked about how wonderful she smells and thanks her for perfuming her letters but oh how he wished he was smelling it on her instead. He talked about crying to one of his friends because he missed her so much and how embarrassed he was. He talked about how he wished his best friend's parents (who I'm still in touch with) were his parents because then there would be nothing to worry about---they'd love her because he loved her, no questions asked.
He told her he was glad she was finding ways to keep busy while he was gone. He said he knew how unhappy she was when she didn't have enough to do. (Ahem. My mother, my self.)
Shortly after he got back they got engaged. Then the arguments really began. Including one very hot one about my mom not sending them pictures. My dad was very angry and quoted the letter my grandfather had written. "How dare you say, 'How can I give my blessing when I don't even know how my future daughter-in-law looks?' What does that matter?"
About that time my mom started writing them letters, too. One of the first ones has two portraits of her. I so wish I had a scanner, but I'll take a picture of them. She also told them about how she was trying to get a job at a Timex factory, but even though she scored the highest on their application test they wouldn't hire her because she was left handed.
Also in the box were my birth announcement; a recipe for cheese souffle; a little box with a cake decoration that says "I love you, Hony" [sic] and a note on top written by my mom saying my dad had made her a cake for their six month wedding anniversary; and a note with a diaper pen through it written by my dad that says, "Thank you for the little girl! Love, Johnny Cool." My mom called him Johnny Cool.
One letter from my dad to my mom's parents when he was in Viet Nam. How different that letter is from the letters he wrote his own parents. He says, "I'm feeling so much better than I was when I started writing this letter. That's what thinking of you guys does to me." He asks if my mom is showing yet. She was about four months pregnant with my brother at the time. He says how he hopes he can watch her tummy grow with the next one. (Which was me, and he did.)
Having those letters and getting to read this is so so so precious. I can't wait until I can share them with my brother.
And I'm going to make that cheese souffle.