077: On Writing Letters

a letter to a soldier, Nina Stibbe's "Love, Nina," chat groups as an epistolary form, letters as evidence of human connection + links to Charlie Porter's new book and Tom Stevenson's war reporting

I wrote my son a hand-written letter this week. Not a note stuck on top of a package. Not a typed, printed letter. A real letter, hand-written on thick paper, that I folded up, put into an envelope, and affixed with a Christmas-themed forever stamp that I found at the bottom of a drawer.

I wrote to him because he’s on a US Navy amphibious assault ship somewhere in the South Pacific and it’s the only way I can reach out to him. He’ll be underway for between eight weeks to three or four months. We didn’t know exactly when he was going to leave until the morning he left. We don’t know what the ship’s mission is or where they are going.

I asked, “can you at least tell me if you’re going near Yemen? “

“Mom. I’m in the Pacific Fleet.”

His birthday is coming up. When he turned 18 at boarding school, I had this idea of getting his dorm advisor to order pizza for the whole dorm. Thank God I asked him first. He was adamantly opposed.

This year’s birthday is a million years later, but once agai…