Letter to Home
Dear Mom,
I hope this letter finds you and the rest of the family well.
I don't know why I'm sitting here, wide awake, Christmas Eve, writing
this letter. By the time you get it, it will be well into the new year.
I guess I'm more homesick than I want to admit.
It's cold here and there is snow, but it sure isn't like the winters I
remember in River Run. Here the cold cuts through clean to the bone; so
deep sometimes I feel I'll never get warm again. And the snow makes my
toes go numb and it sure makes it hard to walk all the miles from one
camp to the other.
I wish I was home right now, sitting in front of a roaring fire, helping
you get the last of the cards addressed so they could be sent out before
Christmas. I wish I was home to give Jeff a hard time about eating too
many Christmas cookies. You did bake them this year, didn't you? If I
close my eyes and concentrate really hard I can smell them baking in the
oven. Just like when we were kids and would come in from playing in the
snow and you would have fresh cookies and hot cocoa waiting for us.
I'm sure the tree is in the same spot that it always was. I hope it is.
I know you've talked about moving it, but this way I can picture it with
all the same ornaments and icicles. (Did you make sure Linda didn't put
the icicles in clumps? I don't think she'll ever learn that they need to
be spread out.) How I loved running down the stairs as a kid to see
what Santa had brought. Remember the year Santa brought me the skates
and I fell the first time on them and broke my arm?
Are you fixing turkey with cranberry dressing? What I wouldn't give to
have a regular Christmas dinner instead the same old rations out of a
tin can; day in and day out.
Mom, I wonder if this war will ever be over and I'll get to come home
and spend the holidays with my family. I know I'm here for a reason and
I know we're going to win. We have to. I've seen the way people live
here and how they are treated, their lives torn apart because of one
man's hatred and desire to rule the world. We can't let him win and
thinking back on Christmases past, I know that if we win this war, I am
helping to protect that magic for generations to come. The freedom to
celebrate this holiday and have turkey and dressing, presents under the
tree and midnight mass, cookies and cocoa and kissing girls under the
mistletoe. (Of course I never did that, just Jeff.)
So I guess I'll spend this Christmas remembering and thinking of those I
love. And hoping that by next Christmas, we'll all be together again.
I better go, this letter is longer than I intended and it's getting late
here. Actually it's Christmas now, so Merry Christmas, Mom. Tell Jeff
and Linda the same. I'll write again soon.
Your loving son,
Hank
p.s. Thanks for always making Christmas special, Mom. Those times never
meant more to me than they do right now.
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