Mom's Blog: The Lost Art of Letter Writing

[This Blog Entry Composed by Mom]

This morning I mailed letter #32 to Graham. I started writing letters to him in late June, even before we left to drop him off at the Academy. I wanted there to be letters waiting for him when he arrived.

I am pretty sure it took a few days before he was actually able to get to his post office box. I was getting conflicting reports from the parent Facebook page that some squadrons were being denied that opportunity.

All I knew is that I would keep sending letters, making time each day to let Graham know what was happening at home, how proud we were of him and to try to give guidance and suggestions on how to stay mentally tough. The one phrase that seemed to help him get through all the yelling and stress was to “let it roll off you like water off the back of a duck.”

We were advised by parents of older cadets not to tell him how much we missed him. He didn’t need that thought chipping away at his mental strength reserves. Instead with each letter, we tucked in updates on his favorite soccer clubs, newspaper clippings about his friend’s summer baseball success and the odd funny cartoon.

Most days the letters to Graham were quickly tapped out on the computer. Other days, if I was traveling, I grabbed a pen and scratched out an old school letter on lined notebook paper. I had to be sure to print legibly because kids these days are not taught to read cursive. In the past, whenever Graham received letters from his Grandma Irene, I would have to read them aloud to him. He could not decipher her beautiful handwriting.

From the start, I numbered the letters to help him keep them in order if he ever had a stack waiting for him. That will help, me, too, when I eventually print out copies of them to put in a scrapbook. If I was away from the computer, I took a photograph of the letter I had handwritten, so I could print it later. The only letter I didn’t photograph was the one I wrote to him on Induction Day after we said good bye. I hope he kept his copy.

This isn’t the first time Graham has received letters when he was away from home. The summers he was at Many Point Boy Scout camp, his canine siblings Glynis, Pont and River did the writing, using their ‘voice’ to mask my fears as a mom letting go for the first time. Those letters are in his Eagle Scout scrapbook. I hope that he will find them amusing one day. They were certainly fun to write.

Mom and a young Cadet Maas, many moons ago.

Letters have greatly changed through the ages, beyond the loss of good penmanship. In Jane Austen’s time, letters were written with quill and ink on heavy rag paper, folded into a thick packet and sealed with wax before being given to a messenger boy to deliver.

When I was a young girl, my dad worked in Alaska. He would send letters home that were written on transparent, onionskin paper. This whisper-thin paper was made for especially for airmail letters to save on weight for postage. It would have taken a stack of onionskin to create the same thick letter from just one sheet of Austen’s paper.

With today’s digital methods of communication, text messages leave no trace at all, unless you take a screen shot of your exchange and then print it out. A text conversation can occur instantaneously in real time, but how do you put that in a scrapbook?

Letters do more than just provide a permanent record of your interactions with one another. There is something about the physical act of putting pen to paper that grounds you. You have to gather paper and pen, locate a stamp and envelope, and then center your thoughts on that individual. For a few moments, you imagine his or her face, hear his or her voice, recall your last conversation and organize your thoughts. Then you write, pouring love and concern and strength and laughter onto the page.

This evening Graham got his phone back full time and finally has access to email. Now we will be able to communicate instantaneously again – in between classes, before he heads to dinner or whenever he decides to acknowledge his mom!

I loved getting his texts tonight after a six-week communications vacuum and smiled when we received a real time photo of him in his new dorm room. But I have decided to continue writing paper letters to him.

When he takes a few minutes to slow down and read a letter, he will be grounded as well, imagining my face, hearing my voice and feeling the love and strength and pride from home.

I just won’t do it daily like before. It’s time to explore that Empty Nest. My bird has flown.

Dad's Corner

A few items of note, that we learned on Saturday.

Graham will be meeting with his academic advisor on Monday. But he already has his fall semester schedule. The big news is that he graded well on his German language placement exam, and has been assigned Advanced German out of the gate.

Graham's Fall Semester classes, as it stands. 

As I told you in an earlier blog entry, Graham will be housed in Sijan Tower near the cathedral. For the time being, he has two roomies. It's not unusual for cadets to be assigned three-to-a-room. I figure it is like an airline overbooking seats, knowing some people may not show up for their flight. I believe USAFA brings in more freshmen cadets than it has room for, knowing some will wash out. Eventually, Graham will be down to the norm of two cadets per room. His roomies are from Texas (Waco) and Ohio (Cleveland). One of them is on the football team, not sure which. 

Cadet Stolze from Cleveland, is in left rear.

Cadet Mathis from Waco.

About that red belt, and being limited in physical activity on the last Sunday in Jacks Valley: "I had a cold for like two weeks, and I've been toughing it out but that one day I finally just had to get some meds and that made me fill out a Form 18 for the day, and I couldn't do anything. But I'm fine now and I'm still graduating basic training. There are kids here who failed the Assault Course twice, and are still here."

In the last day of Jacks Valley, the cadets held team competitions on all the courses. Graham was part of the team of Hellcats who competed on the Obstacle Course, and they won.

Each cadet is assigned a personal mentor from the squadron, and Graham was assigned a rising sophomore from St. Cloud, Minnesota.