Almost our entire five-month engagement period was spent with Gary stationed in Guam and me stationed in Rhode Island. Gary performed a classic sailor behavior; after he got me interested, he shipped overseas.
Pause for a moment and recall, 1986 is pre-internet, pre-personal computers, pre-cellphones. We were equipped with short weekly phone calls to stay in touch. Short because the going rate at that time was $1/min for a landline phone call. Weekly because Gary had to travel to the local USO, wait in line for a space to open in the row of phone booths to place a call. We also had at our disposal a now quaint, antiquated means of communication, the hand-written letter.
Even when we lived only 600 miles apart we practiced putting our thoughts and feelings for each other on paper. Good thing too when the distance grew to 6,000 miles. Write your two to three page letter, do that every two to three days. There was no waiting for a reply you just had to make sense of the letters as they came. Sometimes they came in batches of two, three or more at a time. It’s almost unimaginable in this day and age. It’s just as unimaginable for me to think of those that in earlier times waited months on end. I’m sure if you’re younger than 30 this may be beyond comprehension.
Our letters were full of the activities of our weeks, the learning from the books we were reading at the same time, and, of course, the highly intense love notes and sweet nothings that maybe harder yet for the immediate-instagram-disappearing-snapchat life to comprehend.
A relationship of private letters, an exchange of ideas across the miles, a waiting period to reflect: these are the habits that celebrated being apart while moving our hearts closer together.
We now text with bitmoji fun in short clipped messages. We email to share interesting articles or forward information to stay abreast. We call with last minute updates. With each of these we have had occasion to fall quickly into a pit of misunderstanding and fouled communication. But not with the letters.
Maybe letter writing isn’t so antiquated after all.
I gained much learning to make life beautiful through this author.
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Just came across this Mary. I smiled to read that shipping out after getting a gal interested is a classic sailor move. My Dad did this, and I still have the letters he wrote to Mom. Sadly I don’t have hers to him and I didn’t think to ask what happened to them while they were still alive. She was a Navy Nurse (who outranked him) and was I believe in Newport R.I and he was on a bucket of Bolts somewhere in the Caribbean. I’m pretty sure they spent more time apart in the courtship phase than together. These letters discuss such weighty issues as religion and family size. Because I came along so late in their lives and had fewer years to hear stories I’m glad to have these treasures.
Aren’t those letters such a peek into the unknown aspeacts of our parents. Thanks for reading my meanderings!
Love this Susan. My cousins published my uncle Jim’s love letters written during World War II. I am sure he never wanted them to be seen by others but it is such a fascinating insight into his thoughts and time in history.
[…] routine throughout my years living in the Philippines and other far-away duty stations. In another post, I detailed Gary and my letter writing over our six months of long-distance engagement. During […]