The wooden desk in his apartment sat cluttered with textbooks, a half empty water glass, and a stack of stamped envelopes. My dad was a lanky man with dark hair and tired eyes, sitting hunched forward. His pen was positioned right above a clean sheet of paper. Outside his apartment, the muffled hums of campus life could be heard. But in that small room, silence lingered in the air. The only thing breaking the silence was the steady tick of the clock and the scratch of his pen. He tapped the pen against the page. He wondered what to say this time.
It was March 1998. There was no email. No FaceTime. No quick text message to connect the ocean that stretched between him and the girl he loved. My mom was serving a mission in the Sapporo, Japan mission. The streets she walked were dusted in snow and the air was sharp with a scent of grilled fish from corner markets. The language around her so foreign, yet so familiar. She would be gone for eighteen months. The only way of staying close to her at that time was through words. Words that were handwritten. Words that would travel thousands of miles, folded into envelopes, stamped, and sent through international mail.
He always began with the date, then her name, written carefully. At first, the words came slowly, like water dripping from a faucet. But eventually, the flow quickened: almost as if a floodgate had opened, the words poured out. He wrote about his classes and the endless assignments stacked on his desk. He wrote about his ever-growing testimony, about the scriptures that lifted him that week when loneliness creeped in. He wrote about funny moments. An awkward roommate who snored a little bit too loudly, or a botched cooking attempt that ended with a charred masterpiece. He wrote these because he knew she would smile at them. Sometimes he cut out news articles, slipped them in, and even added tender love messages at the margins. He knew she would carry in her heart these words even as she carried her scriptures through the icy streets of Hokkaido.
Two, sometimes three times a week, he repeated this ritual. Over the course of her mission, he wrote exactly 173 letters. All of them handwritten and each of them carrying a piece of his love and encouragement. The pen in his hand became his tether, his lifeline. As the ink dried on the page, he often leaned back in his chair. His eyes would slowly close for a moment and he would imagine her somewhere in Japan. He saw her sitting on a tatami mat in a drafty apartment.
When her letters came back, they were rare, brief, and focused on the people she taught. He treasured the letters like rare jewels. He unfolded the paper slowly, almost as if he was afraid it would tear, and read her words again and again. He would fold and refold them until the creases grew soft. Those letters slowly became his anchor.
Decades later, when I asked him what piece of writing he was most proud of, he didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t his polished college essays, nor the professional reports typed on a computer, and not even his private journals. It was those letters. The 173 letters he wrote from 1998 to 1999. Only written under a dim desk lamp, with a pen, paper, and an open heart. My dad told me, “I learned that writing doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t even have to be returned. You just write from your heart.”
His letters were more than ink. They were a sort of presence across a tremendous absence. They turned distance into a sense of intimacy and, in a sense, wrote my future. Those letters wrote my future because those words kept a relationship that would become my parents, and eventually me.
Sometimes I picture one of these envelopes, creased and worn from its long journey, eventually resting in my mom’s missionary apartment on a snowy night. Maybe she had come home, gloves still damp from the snow. She opened the letter, the familiar handwriting spreading warmth through her body. The words lifted her, brought her hope, reminded her that she was not alone. Although a letter can’t make time shorter or the days less demanding, it can remind someone that they are loved.
Letters remind people they are remembered. That they are cared for. That they are loved. My dad’s 173 letters remain undeniable proof that words can outlast distance, time and silence. Proof that simple words can carry a relationship across an ocean.
