A Christmas Eve Surprise, A Stack of Love Letters

A Christmas Eve Surprise: A Stack of Love Letters

But that first letter finally arrived. The pages folded in half were from a small notebook, the rickrack rip at the top visible from the metal binder, remnants of paper sticking up. Dad's words were so shy. She barely 21 and he 24, both, from what I knew, fairly innocent. He wrote, "Dearest Helen" but that was the closest he got at first to direct intimacy. Instead, he thanked her for her postcards and wrote, "It sure was nice to hear from you people … you stated in your cards you people missed us."

He continued: "You should be here. No kidding! Since you people left the place is sure in a blue mood. It seems like all the joy and fun was taken out of the place."

Then he used the word "Freckles." That apparently was his term of endearment for her, due to a large freckle on the side of her nose. Something I never saw. I also never heard him address her as anything else than "Mommy."

The thing that was bothering him, though, was that he learned she had been going steady for seven months with someone else. Guess the possible rivalry spurred him to finally become more intimate, though almost businesslike in his proposition. He wrote, "I might as well be frank with you that I never took a fancy to a person like I have to you …. so please state in your letter, that is, if you write, if my rating with you is the same as mine." Then he underlined the following words: "If not please state. It will make things a lot easier for me. I wanted to tell you this the last night I was with you, but I guess I never had the backbone."

And to think, this letter was delayed, almost never got there. How he must have anguished and it wasn't anything to do with what he wrote but that slip of address. He told her he missed her but ended only with "Keep smiling" and signed off with the Polish version of his name, "Stas," pronounced "stahsh."

Apparently, she took it upon herself to write him a letter before she got that missing first letter. In his response on Sept. 14, you can almost hear his relief: "Howdy Freckles: Finally I got your promised letter. The waiting was a long time, but it sure was worth it. There for a while, I gave up hopes of hearing from you, but this morning my mother called up and told me we had some mail. Well anyhow, it sure was nice to hear from you."

Sept. 15, another letter from him after she responded to his initial letter, reassuring him that her feelings matched his. He writes, "I feel at ease now since that matter is all cleared up. I'll be frank with you. I feel like I have the world in my hands. So here's hoping you don't mind me feeling that way."

He teases her about the size of her feet, a healthy size ten, and says she left a pair of shoes behind. By Sept. 22 they are using airmail, double the price at six cents, and he asks, "Do you want to come and get them yourself?"

The letters fly back and forth, twice a week. At first mostly probing how serious each should take the other. By early October he asks her if she wants him to bring those shoes himself. "Cheaper than mail," he writes.

At one point early on, Mom's father apparently intervened, writing a letter to Dad to ask him to state his intentions because Helen was too shy to ask. She must have been mooning around about him. This caused a ripple in their correspondence but Dad got over it. He never really proposed. Instead he wrote, "I think that you are tops … not for a long time but forever. Now, it's up to you."

After that, they settled into planning how all this would happen. He shared his dream of one day living out in the countryside, his love of baseball and possibly wanting to play again. His start, the youngest person drafted by the Cincinnati Reds when he was 17, was clouded by a subsequent hunting accident when he was shot in the leg. His baseball dreams never came to reality. Instead, he ended up running his folks bar the rest of his working life, something he said in his letters that he never wanted to do.

His last letter he begins "Hello Darling." He writes he will travel by train. "It sure will be nice to see you. No kidding it will be like heaven. … save all your smiles for me … I'm funny like that. I can't go to the soft stuff. I hope you don't mind." His last sentence, "believe it or not your shoes are very anxious to leave."

I folded up the last letter and put it in its envelope. Put them all back in the box. This glimpse into how they were. The letters helped explain perhaps some of the reason for any discord in their marriage. The fact they knew so little about each other before making such a big commitment. One that both of them stood by, through thick and thin, raising four children.

What a privilege to be able to spend the time with them. The letters were creased from having been opened and reopened. The edges of the box worn. How many times had Mom pulled them out to look at them perhaps after a disagreement? Or a disappointment. Once Dad even left her to tend the bar while he headed off on a week-long hunting trip that she'd only learned about through the customers at the bar. Somehow, she'd gotten through all that. I was sure the letters helped.

Here they were before me, whether it was her intervention, providence or just coincidence. There was a true sense of grace to have found them that Christmas Eve, proof enough that love does not end at the grave.

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A Christmas Eve Surprise: A Stack of Love Letters

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