Announcing My Darling Naki: A Love Story in Letters
How can a couple who only met three or four times in person before they married stay together for 64 years? How can a couple whose courtship was almost entirely through letters create an enduring love?
When I stumbled upon a box of letters on my mother-in-law’s hearth, bundled every which way, I had no idea they would reveal an epic love story. A story about my in-laws’ meeting through to their early days of marriage and ultimately the birth of their first son. The letters were all in my father-in-law’s hand — a story told in his voice through his words while he and his wife were largely separated by war and his service during WWII.
We see their first letter after meeting and their love for one another emerging as his greetings get ever more personal. We watch them determine where and how they’ll marry and where they’ll live. And we see their hopes and dreams, including Dad talking of his one-day 50th anniversary so far off, yet his photo on that day is included here. We see them talk about money and family trauma, and watch in earnest to see if he can get home in time for the birth of his son, an agonizing dilemma for him. Their early life together unfolds in these beautiful letters, depicting a time that was so complicated and yet so simple.
When my in-laws passed and their letters came home to us, I asked my husband if I could unbundle the letters to see what they said. They were, after all, his parents’ correspondence, but they were Mom and Dad to me. I wanted to know if there was anything there, and after I opened the box, organized the envelopes, took out each letter, and stacked them into piles by date and year, I then read them, and their love story unfolded. Mom and Dad were separated most of their early years together. Dad wrote her nearly every day for over four years. My Darling Naki is their love story in letters.
They were separated, just as so many of us are today. The pandemic has kept many of us apart. It has left us without the ability to travel. But we have instant means of communicating — Mom and Dad did not. They had to write. Telegrams, telephones, planes, and trains were way too expensive. A stamp and paper kept them together. With WWII as a backdrop, no real means to see one another, and uncertainty everywhere, they persevered. They dealt with love and loss, learned to trust, and figured it out. They didn’t have email, they didn’t have Zoom. They built and sustained a relationship remotely, just as so many of us are doing today.
Mom and Dad teach us unconditional love. To trust and understand before being trusted and understood. Dad’s letters tell us that matters of the heart are highly personal, yet entirely universal. They learned to love with a world war going on, just as we’re waging war on a pandemic, social injustice, political strife, and so much more. Mom and Dad tell us that, despite all that’s going on out there, we can persevere — and that going through life loved and loving is as great as it gets. They joke and laugh. They learned to live and love. And through their letters, we see that lasting love is possible.
Gus and Irene were an ordinary couple who met at an extraordinary time. They leave us with the legacy of their love story, which we chose to share because our world needs more love stories like this one. As we lose the “Greatest Generation,” we find in their memoirs — accidental or otherwise — inspiration, hope in possibility, commitment, unconditional acceptance, love, and a promise that life needn’t be that complicated even in complicated times.
Anthea