Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul by Jack Canfield Read Free Book Online Page A

Lambert

1,716 Letters
    On November 15, 1942, I eagerly said “I do” to my dashing groom, who was proudly wearing his crisp, formal United States Army uniform. Only a short eight months later, he was called to serve in World War II, bound for an unknown destination in the Pacific for an unknown period of time.
    When my young husband left, we made a promise to write each other every day we were apart. We decided we’d number each of the letters we sent so we would know if any went astray. Writing to each other daily, we found there were many times that there was little to say other than “I love you.” But in every single letter those words were included.
    The war found my husband, an Army dentist, right on the front lines. Still, whether he was in the heat of battle in the Aleutians, Okinawa, or the Philippines, he always found some time to write every day. On occasion, he even found time for more than just writing. When he had spare moments, he would make me gifts of jewelry out of any indigenous materials he could find.
    During one of the lulls in battle in the Philippines, he found time to carve a beautiful mahogany letter opener with my name, Louise , carefully engraved on one side of the handle, and Philippines 1944 engraved on the other side. He told me the letter opener was to help me open my daily letters from him. More than 50 years later, that letter opener still sits on my desk and is used daily to open the mail, although none of the letters I receive today are as important as the ones I received from him during the war.
    There were days and weeks when I would get no mail. Of course, that would leave me fearful about my husband’s well-being—many of the men in his troop had already been killed. Inevitably though, the mail service would catch up and a slew of letters would arrive at one time. I would busy myself sorting them by number so I could read them in chronological order and savor each one. Unfortunately, every letter was screened by Army censors, and I would have to try to imagine what was written under the blacked-out lines.
    In one of the letters, when my husband was in Hawaii, he asked me to send my measurements so he could have some lounging pajamas made for me by the famous Chinese tailors living on the island. So I responded by sending him my 35-24-36 measurements. (Oh, those were the good old days.) My husband received the letter but the measurements had been blacked out by the Army censors, who had thought I was trying to communicate to him by secret code. Somehow, the pajamas fit anyway.
    By November 1945, the war was over and my husband was finally sent home. We had not seen each other since he had left more than two years and four months earlier. We had spoken to each other by phone only once during that entire time. But since we had faithfully kept our promise to write daily, we each had written 858 letters to each other—a total of 1,716 letters that had carried us both through the war.
    When my husband returned from the war, we were fortunate to obtain a minuscule apartment in a tremendously tight real estate market in San Francisco. In these box-like quarters there was barely room for the two of us, so to our regret, we had to dispose of all our letters. In the years since the war ended, we’ve been fortunate to have never been apart for more than one or two days at a time, so we’ve had little opportunity to write each other letters again.
    But through all the years, my husband has continued to show me and our children and grandchildren the devotion and love he showed me in those early days. We’ve just celebrated 53 years of being happily married, and while the letters from those first few years of our marriage no longer remain, the love within them will be forever engraved in our hearts.

    Louise Shimoff
    PEANUTS. Reprinted by permission of United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

Martha’s Secret Ingredient
    It bothered Ben every time he went through the kitchen. It was that little