This Lifetime. | Edward Heffron

X.

Grandmother smiled wistfully, cupping her tea in her hands. "Every month he would send me a letter about training, the people he had met, and snippets of his experiences," she said, "He never told me what exactly went on, but Babe stayed the same. He always told me he was coming back for me."

Eleanor wiped her greasy palms on her workpants and picked up a tray from the cafeteria. She had dropped out of highschool a few months after Babe had left, much to the disdain of her mother, but so did so many other women. They were all taking up jobs they would have never even considered in the past in order to support the troops.

She worked as an aircraft technician, but her job mainly consisted of cleaning and delivering supplies needed for maintenance. Working around planes, she felt as close to Babe as she could possibly be. Often finding herself watching whenever they would test our the airplanes, Eleanor wondered what it must have felt like to jump. Was he afraid?

What a stupid question that was. Of course he was, all of them were. That made her appreciate him so much more.

Sitting at the end, she took out a notebook and began writing. It was reminiscent to her times in highschool when she would write stories, except this time, she was writing down things to tell Babe through her letters. She would tell him all sorts of things, how Dolores had found someone the last summer she was in New York, and how they were to be wed. Eleanor would tell him how jealous she was that her best friend would be living there, but she was happy for her, and besides, she and Babe would definitely visit right?

As the work day ended, she made her way home. Her siblings were all still in school, but her younger brother, Max, had made many attempts to lie his way into the paratroopers. Face like a baby, none of the recruitment officers fell for it, but still, he tried. Eleanor looked up at him for that.

"Mother," she called, placing the letter on the dining table, "I have another letter for him. Could you go mail it again tomorrow?" Her mother was the one in charge of sending off the letters they all wrote to her cousins at war, and Babe, of course, as Eleanor was busy working a 12-hour shift.

Her mother looked down at the letter on the table and pursed her lips. She nodded once and picked it up, putting it on the pile of letters that were to be sent out tomorrow. They were all encouraged to write to raise up morale, and Eleanor hoped that her stories from home would make him fight harder so he could come home.