One of the neat things about reading nonfiction is
the unexpected stuff you come across. For instance, in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, about Lincoln and his
cabinet, I learned that Lincoln successfully pressed the U.S. Post Office to
dramatically speed up its delivery so that soldiers fighting the war could
receive morale-boosting letters from their families and loved ones.
For any other president, that would have been the
crowning achievement of his administration; for Lincoln, it’s a forgotten
footnote. I thought it interesting at the time and made a mental note of it,
but never expected that it would come to mean something personal to me.
Now that we have a soldier in the family (or more
accurately, a soldier in training, since he’s still in basic at Fort Jackson
SC), the mail has taken on a new meaning. Soldiers in basic training have next
to no access to computers and telephones, so good, old-fashioned snail mail is
about their only means of sending and receiving information.
The Letter Written by Hand
Apparently mail call, where the sergeant stands in
front of the group and calls out the names of those who received a letter that
day, is still a big deal, and the Army really encourages families to write to
their soldiers. Before Nick shipped out, we made sure he had a good ruled
writing pad, an ample supply of envelopes, and a couple of sheets of Forever
stamps, so he could write to us as well.
Whatever else our son may lack, he at least has a
father who’s a professional writer and doesn’t mind firing off a letter —
enjoys it, in fact. Linda doesn’t write for a living (unless you count final
exams), but she’s also comfortable writing a letter. We’re each trying to write
twice a week, staggering the mailings so the letters arrive on different days.
Nick’s aunts and friends have also said they’ll write.
Back in the Pleistocene, before there was email, I
used to write a lot of letters. Mostly I typed them or printed them from a
computer. I have a few friends I send long e-mails to, but except for thank-you
notes, I hardly ever mail anything handwritten. That’s changing now, because I
want the letters I send to Nick to be as personal as possible.
What? You Do Cursive?
I have pretty good penmanship, if I do say so
myself. And I don’t; bank tellers are always fawning over my handwriting. I’d never
have made it as a doctor, but it comes in handy now. Even though he never
learned cursive in school, my son should be able to read what I’ve written to
him.
For the letters to Nick, I bought a couple of types
of high-quality off-white paper with matching envelopes. That in itself was a
revelation. At the best stationery/office supply store in town, they had only a
handful of choices in the section of formal letter-writing paper. After all,
who sends letters these days?
The letters are written with a Japanese
ink-cartridge pen with an old-fashioned nib. Linda got it for me as a wedding
anniversary present in March, a few weeks before we learned that Nick was
enlisting. It glides over high-quality paper with an effortless smoothness, and
I can easily dash off a two-page letter in half an hour. Funny, when I stop to
think about it. I’ve been earning a good living as a writer for 40 years but am
just now doing my most important work, and I’ll never see a dime in revenue
from it. The payoff, however, will be huge.
