Going through old papers last spring, I dug for a treasure I knew was there somewhere – letters my grandmother had saved from my mom starting in India in the 1930s and extending decades through the remainder of the century. I finally found what I sought, buried in an old blue trunk with a Kabul return address.
The pile of blue aerograms and nearly weightless airmail stationary was still in order, so all I had to do was pick a date to find my parents’ first-hand accounts. Being the youngest and most selfish child, I of course dipped into the letter timeline the week of my birth. From there I jumped back to the joyful birth accounts of my brothers, Mom’s simple and illustrated letters to her parents from boarding school, the anticipation during my parents’ engagement, Mom’s heartbroken letter to her mother in India after her father’s drowning, and Dad’s careful accounts of the destruction of the church and coup attempts in Kabul to name a few.
The story of our family continued as I opened the box with our own letters to our parents. Beginning with hilarious scrawls and drawings that made me cry with laughter to my own boarding school notes, followed by launching out on our own into college and beyond, the stack closed with the beginning of the next generations as grandchildren and great-grandchildren sent “Oma and Opa” their love in letters.
I knew that each letter was faithfully answered by the recipient and that the rhythm of letters was also going between my grandparents, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins with post marks from India, Nepal, USA, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Uganda, Kenya, Panama, Somalia, Thailand, Lebanon, and even on-board ship. It was a true “worldwide web” of communication,
going back and forth
and east and west
and far and wide –
the very pulse of a family separated by thousands of miles.
We didn’t even have a phone growing up because apparently Dad being a doctor was not a good enough reason for the Peshawar authorities to allow one. So it was all letters. Weeks and months would pass between news from loved ones. When a letter finally did arrive, the announcement was called out to the whole house, hearts would skip a beat, and like bees attracted to a bright flower, everyone would stop what they were doing and come to sit and listen.
Is everyone home? We can’t open it until then (this was often followed by a debate over the moral obligations and necessity of even waiting until everyone was home).
Did it already get opened and read by authorities?
No? Then open it carefully so it ends up in one piece and not in parts!
No peeking!
Read it aloud!
Save the stamp!
Happily sipping the nectar of news, we would sit as the letter was finally allowed to be read by deciphering the handwriting and going through the contortions required to read notes crammed all around the edges after the writer invariably ran out of room in the main letter.
Then would come the recounting of details, the glow of feeling close, and the analysis when Mom would try to read between the lines about how the loved one was really doing and feeling.
Many letters were lost, confiscated, delayed, or simply confusing. I remember my distress when Dad wrote me in boarding school telling me that Mom’s operation had gone well because the letter telling me she would have an operation in the first place had been lost and I hadn’t even known. Another time we were not receiving any Christmas letters or cards in December. When Mom asked the mailman about it, he reported that the man who could read English was sick! A letter my mother wrote on-board ship in the 1940s stated that six people had died on the trip, one in a freezer with a snake?!?
I have tried to explain to our girls the marathon waits and the\ excitement of the arrival of those letters when all they know is the world of instant communication. I even struggle to remember those feelings.
I try to imagine now as a parent what it would have been like when I traveled back alone from Pakistan in my college summers stopping off in places like Thailand where I had absolutely no ability to communicate and barely knew which train I was on. My parents had to wait for weeks until my little blue aerogram finally came and let them know I had arrived. When my girls travel, I stay awake all night if necessary until I hear in real time that they are safe and sound.
How did my parents do it? I know the answer. Prayer and trust.
Prayer after the goodbyes and prayer between the letters and prayer after the letters. Theirs was faith and trust borne out of knowing they were not in control.
As the queen of annotation, somewhere along the way, Mom began to underline important parts of the letters. In later years when phone calls were added to our communication, she would take notes during calls. My parents poured in prayer over those letters and pieces of paper every day. If you ever wrote or called them, I can assure you that you were also prayed for.
Sitting in the midst of more than a century of letters and notes, I was overwhelmed.
Overwhelmed by the enormous amount of separation that required such young children to write letters to parents and siblings all their lives through.
Overwhelmed by the extraordinary stories all around me.
And overwhelmed by the shared memories that connected our family.
Seemingly tangible waves of emotion swirled around the dusty letters and over me as I felt the love that had held us together across the miles and years - love that was persistent, faithful, responsive, prayerful, powerful, timeless, and rooted in God and in my soul.
The pile of papers had come alive.