I LOVE LETTERS! I love running (literally) to the mailbox to see what surprises it holds for that day. I love going through the stack and finding a letter with my name on it, and even more when it's in that crazy chicken scratch handwriting that I know belongs to Matt.
In this day and age I think we take for granted how quickly we can contact people and get almost any piece of information that we need. Having Matt gone has already begun teaching me the valuable arts of patience and independence. I'm not saying that I was dependent on Matt before he left, but I did rely on him for certain things, like getting Mason ready on Sunday mornings or knowing his Social Security Number. It was always easier to just text him for it than to go dig the card out of the file box downstairs. (I now have it memorized, BTW)
It's so crazy to get letters that are dated from 3,4,or even 5 days ago. He tells me what is going on in that day, but that was a few days ago. I wonder what is going on today, right now, this very second. I have no way of knowing. Yesterday I got a letter that FINALLY had his address on it! So today in the mailbox there were 3 letters waiting for the mail lady to whisk them away on their journey to my boy. Writing letters is actually quite therapeutic. It's a great way to see what good things have happened during the day, even when it feels like nothing has gone right. It's also a great way to have a little rant and then be done. Just a sentence or two about what's bugging me. And most of the time once I've written down what's bugging me, it doesn't seem so big anymore.
I'm beginning to understand how our grandparents and great-grandparents must have felt when they were separated. I believe that the war time separations they went through are part of what got us out of the depression and built them into the great generation that they are. If you think about what the world was like before WWI & WWII and what it was like after, there is a huge difference in the way people lived. I don't think it was just the invention of the automobile or the electric stove or the TV. I think it came from the hardships those people endured and the trials they faced. I look at my life now and really my life is easy. If I want to know some piece of trivia or I have a question for someone, I simply pull out my handy dandy little iPhone and look it up. Regardless of where I am, unless I'm in that middle of nowhere place that doesn't have cell coverage, I can find out just about anything I need. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's actually pretty great. But some times I think we take it for granted. Sometimes I think that as a younger, more technologically advanced generation we have forgotten how to work hard for something and how it feels to have to wait to find out how a loved one is doing.
I just booked my plane ticket to go out to Rockford to see Grandma and Pap, and then we are all going to drive down to Fort Benning to see Matt graduate from Basic. It's something that before now I would have never done with out running it by Matt and making sure that the dates were good with him and that I wasn't spending too much, etc. but I just did it! It's kinda liberating to just do something and not run it past the other person and not worry about what he's going to say. Like my mom said to me the other day, I'm not going to go out and buy a new car or rent an apartment or anything huge like that, but I can't bug him with every single question that I have. I have to put on my big girl panties and just do what needs done for our family to function.
And what would a blog post be without a few pictures of Mason;)
Mmmmm! COOKIE!
Cookie Monster Mason
Mason thinks Uncle Collin's beard feels funny
Eating the bubbles in the bathtub/sink
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