D,
She’s here! and she’s a girl! We got your cable, so I know you got ours, but I couldn’t wait to write you a proper letter. Eight pounds twelve ounces, eighteen inches long, with a fuzz of dark hair, and ten fingers and ten toes, which I count every time she’s within reach. Since you wouldn’t allow us to use Dimity—I repeat, it is not an old-fashioned name!—we’ve named her Lori Elizabeth, after foe’s mom and me. She has my mouth and Joe’s eyes and I don’t know whose ears she has, but she has two of them and they’re perfect.
We got your package, too. What can I say? You are a whiz with a needle, but you know that already. How about this: Lori took one look at that bunny’s face and grinned her first grin. Love at first sight if I ever saw it. He reminds Joe of Reginald Lawrence—remember him? that sweet, rabbit-faced lieutenant?—so guess what we’ve named him. On behalf of my beautiful baby girl: Thank you!
Gotta run. It’s chow time for little Lori and I’m the mess hall. I’ll write again as soon as I’m home. In the meantime, here’s a picture of my darling. Joe snapped it with the Brownie and it’s a little out of focus, but so was he at the time. Yes, he’s still working too hard, and yes, he still smokes like a chimney—the nurses made him open a window in the waiting room!
Are we proud parents? Silly question!
All my love, Beth
The rain slashed the windowpanes as the echoes of my mother’s voice faded into the distance. Staring into the fire, I examined my feelings gingerly, the way you explore a cavity with your tongue.
“Isn’t it great?” Bill said. “She sounds so happy. It’s just blazing off the page. I especially like the part about Reginald. We’ll have to go through your mother’s photographs when we’re back in Boston. Maybe we’ll find a picture of the rabbity Lieutenant Lawrence…” Bill’s voice trailed off.
I glanced at him. “You’re right, this is a wonderful find. I never knew that about Reginald.”
Bill looked at me for a moment, then got up and cleared the ottoman of boxes. He pushed it over next to my chair and sat on it, waiting for me to speak. I had the feeling that he would wait patiently for hours, if that was how long it took me to find the words.
I pointed to the closing lines of the letter. “My father died of a stroke. He worked too hard, he smoked too many cigarettes….” I shrank from an irony I had been shrinking from my whole life: a man who had survived Omaha Beach had been killed by a briefcase and a bad habit.
“I’m sorry,” said Bill.
“I never knew him,” I went on. “I was only four months old when he died, and I never… asked her about it.” I knew so many things about my mother. I knew her favorite color, her shoe size, her thoughts on the French Revolution, but about this central experience in her life I knew next to nothing. Of all the things I had never asked her, this was the one I regretted most. “When she spoke of my father, she spoke of his life, not his death.” I brushed a hand across the letter. “I suppose she thought it wouldn’t help to dwell on it.”
Bill nodded slowly. Then, his eyes fixed on the fire, he asked, “How can you avoid dwelling in the past when the past dwells in you?” He sighed deeply, still gazing into the flames. “Dimity said it to me one night while we were staying with her, when I told her about the way the boys at school had acted. She disapproved. She told me that the past was a part of me, and that trying to avoid it was like trying to avoid my arm or my leg. I could do it, yes, but it would make a cripple of me.” Turning to me, he said, “I don’t think your mother was a cripple, was she?”
“No,” I said, “but I don’t know how she managed to get over this.” I held up the letter. “Here, she’s on top of the world, and four months later her world collapsed. How does anyone get over something like that?”
“Would you mind another quotation?” Bill asked.
“From Dimity?”
“It’s something else she said that night. She told me that losing someone you love isn’t something you get over—or under or around. There are no shortcuts. It’s something you go through, and you have to go through all of it, and everyone goes through it differently. I don’t know how your mother did it, but I do know that you’re wrong when you say that her world collapsed. She still had you—”
“A lot of good I was to her,” I mumbled.
“And she still had Dimity. Look around you. What do you see?”
“Her letters.” I felt my spirits begin to lift. “Oh, Bill, how could I be so stupid? Dimity must have been her lifeline.”
“I can’t think of a better person to turn to at a time like that,” Bill agreed. He reached over and pulled a box onto his lap. “Let’s go on reading. We’ll soon find out if I’m right.”