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The handwriting is familiar, neatly looped and slanted
as if traced from a penmanship chart. Despite my secret hope for an
error, the spelling is faultless. The writer is largely responsible
for whatever craft I possess; nevertheless there’d have been wicked
satisfaction in finding it wasn’t always so.
I’ve known that perfect hand all my life but the voice
was unfamiliar, that of a girl I never met, never could have. The
17-year-old had existed I knew, but who can picture their mother as
a teenager, years from becoming the adult she’s always seemed to be?
I count 131 girls and 51 boys in my father’s 1945 high
school picture, which hangs in our hall. I doubt the ratio was much
different when my mother wrote these letters in 1942 and 1943,
making World War II impossible to overlook. But the thoughts are
still those of a teenager, not so different from the son she would
have one day.
My boyfriend got a job working nights, which really
makes me mad. I went to the Palladium three weeks ago ... Harry
James was there and I haven’t been since. I sure like Harry James,
he can really play the trumpet. Les Brown is there now ... Mom is
still working at Vultee. She got another raise in pay and is making
good money. She bought a different car last week, a ’38 Chevrolet.
It’s got a new paint job and it really looks nice.
Discovered in an old attic, the correspondence was with
her cousin George, a private in the Marines. The word “superpower”
had not yet been coined; there was no need. And if one could travel
in time to suggest it, a Depression-stricken United States would not
come to mind. America was an adolescent itself, a teenager of sorts
on a tough path to maturity.
The war was palpable as I read, a shadow across the
events of a young life. It’s hard for us who weren’t there to
understand, but little in the American experience so saturated daily
existence, touching everything, everyone. The letters are drenched
in it.
I started working about a week before school was out
and worked till last Sunday ... my boss told me she was going to
sell out and go into defense work. I worked at the Golden Gate
Candy Shop. Now I am out of a job ... (Bob) must really like Big
Bear. It seems that every time I see him he is just getting back
from Big Bear. I guess Bob will be registering for the draft now
that he is 18.
Bob was over last night and he told me you were no
longer in N. Carolina, and that you are someplace where you can not
write. I wondered why you did not answer my last letter ... I guess
you will get to see the world after all.
Less than a month after those words were written, my
mother’s cousin took part in the landing of the First Marine
Division at Guadalcanal. U.S. forces were pounded by air, sea, and
ground attacks for days, severed from desperately needed supplies
and reinforcements. Thousands on both sides died in the months that
followed.
Please be careful because we all love you and want to
see you come marching home when this war is over.
George survived the landing and ensuing battles but
contracted a case of malaria that hospitalized him for weeks. He
recovered to serve the rest of the war, then came home to marriage
and a long career in law enforcement. The stray icy sweats of
malaria remain, a reminder of a younger life and a country just
coming of age.
As are the contents of the forgotten box he stumbled
across. A carton of quiet whispers from a voice I knew existed, had
to have existed, but never thought I’d hear.
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