Before I was even a thought in their heart my parents were young and in love.
They dated, but were mostly friends in the beginning and then pen pals as my Dad spent several years in the South Pacific as a young officer in the Navy.
I guess they were more than pen pals
I know this because of the tattered envelopes with 3 cent stamps and air mail written on them..the stacks that burst with young dreams with every crackle of the paper as they are unfolded.
My mothers very neat cursive and my fathers almost illegible script.
Scoldings for not writing ..mostly from my mother to my father. Delight in a surprise phone call..followed up by a letter telling each other how much it meant.
Frustration that the postman waited until the afternoon delivery to deliver the long awaited letter in the mailbox instead of the morning delivery.
Talk of longing, and the future and remnants of a draft of a Dear John letter that was sent but the original not saved.
Despite the break up the letters continued written on notebook paper and the back of hospital letterhead in the dark hours of night shifts at the hospital.
Suddenly love blossomed again and talk of marriage filled the pages. Discussions on furniture and dishes and did they really need a refrigerator just now?
A time and a place when luxuries we take for granted were expendable.
A peek into who my parents were as young adults with their whole lives ahead of them. Ambitions, dreams, and an endless future ahead.
If time travel were possible I wouldn’t choose to go into the future or even back into my own life but I would love to go back to see my parents as young adults just starting out. My mother as this petite hard working nurse taking care of pediatric polio patients, accidentally dying her hair red and defying her Mom by sunbathing and adding to her freckle collection 🙂
Seeing my Dad as a young Navy officer, returning home to pursue a second degree at Purdue University, living in a frat house and apologizing to my mother for writing to her in pencil because he loaned his pen out and it hadn’t been returned.
Living in the married barracks at Purdue University with most meals consisting of Campbells soup and cheese sandwiches and reading the newspaper at a friends house because they couldn’t afford one.
Some of the above is from their letters and some from memories they shared over the years. There is an excellent chance that my imagined version of their young lives is glossier than the real version and yet I still wish I had the chance to witness their young love, the sacrifices they made to be with each other and the early life they built.
While I can’t actually time travel..yet. 🙂 I appreciate the chance to do it with the words they wrote to each other, the stories and the pictures they painted with their words.
Wordsworth said it best:
Write to me frequently and the longest letters possible; never mind whether you have facts or nothing to communicate; fill your paper with the breathings of your heart
May your paper be filled with the breathings of YOUR hearts….
