In an instant messaging world, the only link we currently have to our youngest son, a Marine in the making, is a stack of 10 hand-written letters. Each bares a South Carolina postmark and the ill-effects of being passed around half the county to be read and re-read. I have always loved words. Written ones, never more so than now.

And for a guy who wasn’t too fond of English, his letters are surprisingly vivid. He describes his new world as smelling of salt, with sandy soil, Spanish moss and the sound of jets and yelling platoons rounding out the word picture. He tells of days that begin at 0400 hours and nights when he’s on gear watch. The sand fleas are terrible, he adds, but the gas chamber was the absolute worst. “l felt like I was dying,” he wrote after making it through the dreaded requirement.

Some of his hasty scribbles are even funny: “Things I Learned the First Week – 1)how to wear the same clothes for four days, 2) how to dress in sixty seconds, 3) that there’s no such thing as an excuse, and 4) when a drill instructor messes up, it’s your fault.”

Time has passed, though, and on the day this column is scheduled to print, Son. No. 3 should be half-way through the 13-week matrix we have posted on the refrigerator. There are no calendar designations on that sheet of paper — only training days — numbered and sparsely labeled with things like combat care, 10 kilometer hikes and bayonet techniques. The lines he pens help us fill in the blanks.

7/7 – Have to sleep at attention. The drill instructors already make my hair stand up when they walk in a room. We have five minutes to use the head and shower – all 85 of us.

7/14 – It’s a black weather flag almost every day. Recruits have had heat strokes. Called an ambulance five times so far. My rifle goes with me everywhere.

7/18 – Jake McClung turned 18 today. Snuck out a cookie and hope to slip it to him after lights out. Please pray for Warren. His mom has cancer.

7/20 – I love mail call. Got 16 letters today. Pink eye is spreading through our platoon like wildfire.

7/25 –Did our first three-mile hike with gear. Me, Seward and Hughes have started a small prayer group.

7/27 – Fell in the water on the ropes course. More dangerous than I thought.

7/30 – Friend got sent home today because he’s allergic to ants. Hated to see him go, because we’d been through so much together.

8/3 – Got to drill on the parade deck today. Passed swim quals. More failed than passed, but will get to try again.

8/7 – Boxed in the pouring down rain today. Won my match. Lost three more to swimming. Hard to say good bye. Earned tan belt in martial arts.

8/8 – Did a half-mile run in boots through sand today. Passed the obstacle course. We lost Kemp to a shoulder injury.

8/9 – Left my toiletry bag in the wrong spot and the DI stomped all over it. Sure learned my lesson.

8/9 – Moods are high tonight because we beat another platoon in Initial Drill. We all have to sit in silence, though, because a recruit from Tennessee laughed.

Here on the home front, we are doing our best to empathize. One brother is running a mile every day in his honor. My husband does pushups each night. I swore off sweets in an effort to pray for him more. (Lasted less than a month. I am weak.) His sister sent a box of her homemade sugar cookies to his base, something, unfortunately, our recruit advised her not to do – a day too late.

And after the reading and the smiling (and sometimes the tears), we fold his letters very carefully along the creases and place them back into their respective envelopes.

Then we write to him.

I have always loved words. Written ones, never more so than now.

 

Wesson resident Kim Henderson is a freelance writer who writes for The Daily Leader. Contact her at kimhenderson319@gmail.com.