I hate thinking of titles.

Every week, during WWII, my grandfather wrote my grandmother a letter. He sent it from an island in the Pacific. I haven't read a whole lot of them, but they are collected into a binder. It's a thick binder. He must have been busy there - one of the only stories he told about the war was that he never got to see the end of the movie they showed on the base on Saturdays or it might have been Sundays, so he saw a lot of the first halves of movies. I think he - and maybe I'm romanticizing - he found the time to write to my Grandmother. They were married after WWII, and I think the letter writing had a lot to do with it. I don't know if they were engaged before war, or after.

There is something about writing letters, the tactile act of putting pen to paper, that carries so much more meaning than sending emails, or talking on the phone. As much as we would like to deny it, finding the paper, finding a pen that you like, buying a stamp, and remembering to actually put the letter in the mailbox are difficult things to do. And those are only the physical difficulties. Others include worrying that the letter is boring, that you have said the wrong thing, or talked about something to someone that might come across badly in the letter.

My grandmother must have waited for those letters. And worried about whether or not the next one was going to come.