Hello, Again

Hello? Is anybody out there?

It’s been almost exactly five years since I posted on this blog. In all honesty, it felt painful and difficult to look through these letters and keep posting after my Aunt Adrienne’s death. And, even now, I’m still writing with some trepidation. Have you, reader, noticed that a lot has changed in five years?

I don’t think I need to remind you that the world has been grappling with a global pandemic, social upheaval, increasingly deadly weather events… But maybe, since it can be so hard to feel optimistic about the future, it’s a good time to reconsider the past, and how it might bolster us. A quick personal update: Since last writing here I got my PhD, published a book (forgive the shameless plug), gained a niece and nephew, got married (which gave me a very cool stepdaughter), and began raising a baby of my own here in New York City. He is an absolute joy and I hope I can do an adequate job instilling in him pride in the family that he won’t ever get to meet.

I keep thinking about Alex and Sylvia, what how their letters might have different significance to me in today’s global and personal context. Having left the job of going through their letters unfinished, I’m taking a baby step today towards revisiting this material with a new post. Maybe some of you out there would still like to hear about their story and I thank you for sticking with me/us/them.

In December of 1944, Adrienne – “Cookie,” if you recall – was only 6 months old. Having a one year old myself, I can now picture exactly how little and helpless a 6-month old is: They can’t walk or talk or eat much solid food and only some of them are just beginning to sit up on their own. Alex is in training, I think, and was separated from Sylvia for months. We know this because he says in the letter (written in January) that he is looking forward to seeing her at “the end of the month that my birthday is” which is March – the day before mine. I wonder why he couldn’t say “March.” Was revealing his birthday a national security risk? Perhaps it would give away the ship’s docking dates.

Can I just make note of the Naval “logo” (that can’t be the right word) at the top of his stationary? It looks like a group of men on a ship firing a cannon at a far off island… Yes, in 1944 that is a very literally representation of what the Navy was meant to do, but I’ll just say that in 2022 that doesn’t read to me as particularly heroic. And from these letters and the stories my grandpa told us years later, I don’t think he felt particularly heroic during his time in the Navy.

In this letter we also see the origins of Alex’s mustache!

Anyway, without further ado, here’s Alex (I’ll see you on the other side of the letter with a few thoughts)…

Jan 29 ’45

Dearest Silvia,

It is very hard to write after so long not having written and having many subjects on the taboo list. This is the third letter I started. Dearest, I am well and happy as anyone could be under the circumstances and particularly because I know I shall see you towards the end of the month my birthday is, unless plans change.

Days pass very uneventfully with standing watches and working when weather permitted, not too much to do. I grew a mustache and a beard, both look ugly but I’ll save the mustache for you to judge. Dearest, I think of you constantly and particularly on the lonely night watches the thoughts about you make these seem less long. You always spoke of the home in the country and I know you yourself don’t believe we will ever be able to get it. Darling, I think we will have it, so, we’re when this war is over. I figured that out, if I’ll have a job and a little luck. Do you remember Rose’s house on Croton on the Hudson? That is my ambition.

I have thought of the in improvements I could make on it, slowly. Darling, when I come home for good, we shan’t open home again in the city. Either we stay by our brothers mothers or take it if necessary a cheap furnished apartment somewhere. But we shall not take on our next lease, and furniture, and etc. When we will have a few hundred dollars, parentheses hold onto the bonds!) We will make a deposit and take the home. Then spring summer and autumn you will be up there, I can stay by one of my sisters and come home for the weekends. That way we will have no extra rents to pay. In winter, you will be down in the city with me. That way darling, we will be able to pull ourselves out of the hole. Later on I’ll have a little car and all will be easier. This is on the whole the “fruits” of my thoughts on the watches. I am writing of them so perhaps you might instead of just wishing, perhaps could start to think of it in a practical way.

I think we could manage the situation if you and I will it strongly enough. It would be ideal for cookie to grow up in good clean air and nice environment. How is Cookie? She must be teething by now and I am sure you have your hands full with work. I bet she is beginning to stand up. I wonder all the time about you both and how life will be after this war is over.

Nothing much happened during our voyage except that the only boy who went through the “boots” training got ill with an attack of appendix. So it seems he will be left over in one hour stopping places. We had to do a lot of cheering him, packing ice and see to it that he wouldn’t be too lonely. So on our free time the boys would get together and have a long session of “pinacle or brisk. The contests got so hot and better that we all neglected everything else for them. That is one reason I’ll have to make up on the way back particularly on studying as I did so far.

Fed 2 –

We are in Port now, I haven’t yet taken ashore. I am going today and send you a cable which I know will make you a little happier, also will have a few glasses of beer. Of course I don’t blonde that’s just so I don’t make you jealous. But you know, I have to uphold a good name of the Navy and have a sweetheart in every port!

Darling, so far of all the people I’ve seen and talked to there, everyone looks so miserably tired and colorless even that some of the boys who were a sure remarked about it. That is because these people are at war for quite a long time and of course I am used to American standards. Darling, that is all for a while in my next letter I’ll try to describe my pals on this ship. So far there was no mail from you but I am looking forward and hope that while I am here I’ll get those eagerly weighted words. Darling, I love you and baby and send you a million kisses,  

Alex

***

Alex’s dreams of a country home, in a place like Croton-On-Hudson, is news to me. If I have read it before, I’d forgotten it. Or maybe I chose to believe that my grandparents somehow didn’t hold dear that suburban American dream and that they chose to live in New York City, rather than were forced to. Alex’s dreams kept him company on long, lonely night watches. his plan was not extravagent, it sounds like the dreams many sailors probably wrote home about. It’s packed with practicality, too, he’d stay with his family in the city while he worked, go home on the weekends, and maybe after a while get a “little car.” He and Sylvia never did leave the city. And after he married my grandmother, Sophie, who worked just ten blocks from where I live now (when I began this blog I worked close to where Sylvia lived and now I live close to where Sophie worked) – they stayed in Manhattan until retirement. So many of these letters are about the monotony of war, and the tediousness of everyday life. To me, protected as I am from the worst of the pandemic by privilege, this feels very familiar. What is there to talk about when you’re locked inside (or on a ship) during a major global crisis?

As we navigate yet another variant and wave of COVID-19, it feels harder and harder to imagine a time “when this war is over.” What does “over” mean? Are some traditions no longer recoverable? Or is it better to adjust those traditions to a new reality? When it feels like end times, dreaming is inevitable but planning feels nearly impossible. I like how Alex parses out the difference between dreaming and planning.

My family and I will soon need to relocate, since rents in New York are skyrocketing after so many people who left the city during the pandemic want to return and the housing stock remains elusive and exclusive. I, a life-long New Yorker, have found myself dreaming of a yard for my little one to explore. For now, I luxuriate in watching my son wave to every person and dog we pass on the sidewalk. He gets the most world-weary New Yorkers to smile and say hi as they rush into the subway. Recently, when I thought we were both looking at an open hydrant spraying water, I looked up and saw he’d gotten four firemen to start waving from their truck. I feel unabashedly proud as he – just as Alex imagined Adrienne was doing – learns to stand on his own little two feet.