EASTER---SEVENTY YEARS PAST

 

 

This is the Easter card my Daddy sent to Mother while he was still away in WWII.   Since he came home in 1945, I surmise that it was the one he sent in 1944, making it seventy years old this year.

 

I try to think of that big strong man, gluing down those dainty posies (perhaps having cut them from another card or picture, maybe even one she’d sent to him), and getting the delicate lace of the paper doily cut and trimmed and set in to fit.   The tiny metal bar with the star was from one of the medals he received, and when I framed the card, I saw how hard it must have been to handle that small piece, even with my much-smaller fingers.

 

Even at that young age, I know his hands were callused and scarred and bent a bit from all the farm work and mechanic work that he’d done all his life.   He “worked on” airplanes, keeping the pilots and crew safe and air-worthy, and the imagining of laying down those tremendous responsibilities and sitting down to such a personal and tender moment is a precious thing to me.   Just the great scrubbings with LAVA soap, trying to get his end-of-day fingers clean enough to handle such a delicate bit of work is a lovely thought.  

 

 All the imagination and time that went into that one sweet offering, sent “back home” with his love and thoughts---I smile when I think of that bright young man, so talented with machines and cars and with a genius eye and hand for working with wood.  He began life with very little except a keen mind and hands willing to work, and he built a home and family and many, many houses and rooms and magnificent pieces of furniture which still stand a testament to those talented hands which bent so willingly to craft the dainty message for his sweetheart.