The Letter Project: A Memoir

By Sharon Barbara

I dont feel so good today, Svensk. My chest hurts, headaches and nervous as hell. I was just thinking today, that you might not accept this wreck that the army will turn back to you after the war. I wouldnt blame you if you didnt. (September 1, 1944)

Sharon Barbara was born in 1948, three years after her father was discharged from a military psychiatric hospital. His nervous condition was a mystery to her and a secret source of shame she couldnt bear to acknowledge, that is, until she read his letters. The box containing the letters that her father wrote to her mother between November 1942 and April 1945his time in the service during WWIIhad been right under her nose for years, in the closet of her childhood bedroom.

The Letter Project began as a simple preservation task, but over time, it became a memoir as one question led to another. The authors inventive approach of blending memoir, letters, and fiction, culminates in a captivating story of a daughters journey through her familys past to find freedom and peace.

Inspired by letters her father wrote to her mother before and after D-Day, The Letter Project offers us a beautifully written portrait of Barbaras own battles with self-doubt, depression, and loss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491743065

Sharon Barbara

Sharon Barbara has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, and her major interests are writing, traveling, and photography. She currently lives in Stillwater, Minnesota. The Letter Project is her first published book.

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1. The Lake

T he lake was a part of our family. It was alive with changing moods—at times contemplative, calm, and blue, and at others lashing out with angry, green, white-capped waves that thrashed against the shoreline and stirred up the organic mush below. Dad felt that the best time to fish was about an hour and a half before dusk, and it was ideal when there was a gentle, warm breeze from the south. Under those perfect conditions, the fish would stop doing whatever it is fish do all day and start looking for food. He never even bothered to fish earlier in the day, except when we had guests who couldn’t wait to go out on the lake.

One hazy late-July day, we were all bored and begged him to go even though he said it was too early. We had already seined minnows with a big net, and there were a few good-sized ones. He agreed that we could try it for a while. So at three o’clock in the afternoon, Dad launched the fishing boat, and we climbed in—Janet, Donna, Kay, and I. We had been swimming all day and were running out of energy. There was a listless quality to the afternoon, and the mosquitoes were getting bad. It would be better on the lake.

There was a tense moment before Dad could get the old ten-horse Johnson started, but after a few pulls, the motor sputtered to life, and we were off. It felt so much cooler on the lake. Even though we weren’t going very fast, the breeze generated by the motion of the boat felt good.

Let’s go to the walleye hole, I begged.

Dad was watching the water ahead. I knew what he would say.

Honey, walleyes don’t bite at this time of day, and it’s too still. We’d be better off trying for crappies or bass over by the rushes.

But I persisted. We could try anyway. I wanted my friends to see how good he was at finding the exact spot, and I knew we would catch something, even if it was only a perch. So he pointed the boat in the direction of the walleye hole, and I sat in the little seat at the very front, right by the anchor, so I would be ready to drop it when the time came. Finally he slowed the boat and started watching the shore intently. Everyone was quiet and watched him respectfully.

What are you looking for? Donna finally asked.

Do you see that twin birch right by the shoreline? he said.

Yes, I think so.

And you see the chicken house on the hill?

We all squinted at the shore. Yes, we could see it.

The spot is right between the chicken house and the tree.

After a few circles, he cut the motor and told me to drop anchor. I heaved it over the side of the boat and made sure that the rope was free. Then I leaned over the end of the boat and watched it disappear into the green depths, where it fell for what seemed a very long time. When the anchor stopped taking out line, I gave the rope a little slack so that the boat could move a bit. Then I hooked the rope in the winch.

Donna was staring at the shore. It doesn’t look like we’re between the chicken house and the tree, she said.

Dad was busy untangling the fishing poles. We are, he said and pointed toward the shoreline. We’re right off that point there.

I had always thought that I would have been able to find the spot by myself, but now I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t say anything, but I suddenly doubted that I knew what Dad was talking about.

After a few minutes of sorting out the fishing poles, he asked if anyone wanted help baiting her hook. Suddenly, everyone’s hands were in the minnow bucket, and water was splashing everywhere.

Oh, they’re slippery! Janet screamed.

Kay got a hold of one, but it flipped out of her hands and went over the side of the boat.

Hold on. He laughed. Let’s use the net. He dipped the small minnow net into the bucket and got one for each of us.

Where do you hook it? Janet asked.

In the tail. Like this, I said, and held the squirming minnow upside down in my hand so that the tail was free. Then I carefully put the hook through as close to the end of its tail as possible.

After my friends tried a few times unsuccessfully, Dad put everyone’s minnow on—except mine, of course—and we all put our lines in the water. The lead sinkers at the end of each line took the minnows to the bottom.

Let out more line, Donna. You’re not at the bottom yet, he advised.

How do you know you’re on the bottom?

When the line is slack, like this. He took her pole and pulled out the transparent filament until it lay on top of the water in a small loop. Then reel it up until the minnow can swim around just off the bottom. Like this. You can feel the sinker bounce on the bottom when you pull the pole up and down, and if you do, just reel it up a few inches. He handed the pole back to her.

Everybody tried it, and he made sure that we were all fishing at the correct depth.

Dad finally baited his own hook. With a flick of his wrist, he sent his filament whirring through the air. He cast his minnow a long way from the boat. Then he pulled the brim of his sweat-stained cap farther down over his eyes and settled back to reel the line in slowly, until it came to rest on the bottom of the lake just where he wanted it. He sat very still, only pulling the rod up occasionally, reeling it in a little, and then letting out more line.

You have to be quiet or the fish will get scared and leave, I whispered loudly.

No one dared move. We just sat there holding our poles in the exact spots Dad had found for us.

I’m getting a nibble! Janet shouted.

Okay. Just wait a few seconds until the fish can take the hook, then give the pole a jerk, Dad counseled.

Janet jerked the pole up and started reeling it in. A small fish dangled off the end of her line, its scales flashing in the sun.

What is it? Janet was waving the pole around, and Dad reached for the flying fish before it could smack him in the face.

He pursed his lips in amusement and said, Looks like the perch are biting now. Let’s give it fifteen minutes and then go over to see if we can hook some crappies for dinner.

We all caught several perch and a couple small sunfish—all of which Dad threw back into the lake. It was fun to catch them, and Kay even learned how to bait her own hook eventually. But we were all getting antsy, so I asked if I should pull up the anchor. Dad was just sitting there, looking thoughtfully out at the water. I could tell that he was feeling a tug. After about thirty seconds, he pulled his rod straight up. It nearly bent in half. He stood up—something we kids were never allowed to do in the boat. He let the line race out and then started reeling it in again slowly. He let it go a couple more times and then steadily and slowly reeled the fish in. We all peered expectantly into the water, wondering what would surface. I remembered the net. Donna was sitting closest to Dad, so I grappled with the fish net and finally passed it to her. She looked stunned when I told her that she should scoop the fish into the net when Dad brought it to the surface.

It’s big! Donna yelled.

Yeah, just don’t fall in, Kay cautioned.

Dad said nothing until a long shadow appeared near the surface.

Eventually, he landed the fish himself and brought it into the boat. It was a northern pike, strong and aggressive. The fish flopped around on the bottom of the boat until Dad grabbed it by the gills. The fish had swallowed the hook. He opened his tackle box and got out a pair of pliers. I turned my head, but my friends watched, riveted, as he stuck the pliers into the fish’s toothy mouth and twisted out the hook.

Wow, how big do you think it is? Janet asked.

About eight or nine pounds, I guess, he said and tossed it back into the lake.

My friends’ mouths hung open as the fish flicked its tail and disappeared back into the depths of Lake Carlos. Then Donna, always the logical one, asked the question that was on all three of their minds.

Why did you throw the fish back?

Pike have lots of bones and don’t taste as good as walleye. He winked and said, Let’s go over by the rushes and see if we can’t catch something else.

I hauled up the anchor, and he ripped the motor into action. He opened it up to go as fast as the ten-horsepower motor could, and we felt exhilarated as the cool breeze hit us in the face and rushed through our hair.

After he had circled one specific area a few times, he seemed satisfied. The spot was just about ten yards away from the edge of the rushes—still not too deep.

Should I drop the anchor? I asked.

Sure, let’s see what’s down there.

I could tell that now Dad was getting down to the business of catching fish for my friends. We all baited our hooks and put them in the water. A breeze ruffled the smooth surface of the lake and made the hair stand up on my tan arms. The smell of suntan lotion intermingled with the fecund lake odors and filled my senses. Toward the shore, I saw the neighbor boys diving off their raft. Janet got the first bite, and Kay had a bite a few seconds later. Soon we were pulling crappies and sunfish out every five minutes. He kept all of them, except the really small ones.

When we got back to the shore, Dad filleted the fish we had caught. We ran off to our campsite on the hill overlooking the lake, made a fire, and fried our fish in an old cast-iron pan Mom had given us. The fish stuck to the bottom of the pan, and we burned some too. Mostly we ate potato chips for supper. Then we toasted marshmallows over the still-hot embers of the fire until Janet’s mom came to pick up my friends. While they returned to their homes in the tiny farming community of Belle River, about ten miles away, I walked up the hill to my house in the dusky evening light.

It was fun to have my three best friends over to camp out on the hill overlooking the lake, but that was a rare occurrence. I spent a lot of time in the summers alone, wandering around the property, exploring, and daydreaming. I would end most days by sitting on a boulder on the shore of Lake Carlos, trying to focus on something that would never quite materialize. I wanted to completely feel the moment and be a part of something, because, in fact, I was a very lonely child.

2. Getting Started

O n a sultry afternoon in August of 1967, I reclined on our old living room couch, daydreaming and staring aimlessly at the familiar objects around the room. I was home after my first year at the University of Minnesota, confused and depressed and with absolutely nothing to do—like so many other afternoons. The bookcase held a cluttered assortment of objects that possessed an aura of past generations: Mom and Dad’s wedding, Grandma and Grandpa’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, a collection of Reader’s Digest condensed books, pictures of me and my sister when we were young, and a small ceramic elephant standing on a gold-painted banana leaf. The elephant was tiny and insignificant, and no one knew where it had come from. I used to imagine that some obscure relative had brought it back as a souvenir from India.

The little elephant held a special significance for me. While staring at it, I could slip into another life where I was confident and poised, brilliant and talented, constantly traveling and meeting fascinating people.

I glanced at Dad’s famous walleyed pike mounted on the wall. Then my gaze shifted to the fireplace mantel, where more family pictures and last year’s Christmas cards were still displayed. The Screaming Eagle plaque, insignia for the 101st Airborne, was there too of course. All I knew about Dad’s war experience was that it had been terrible. He returned a nervous wreck. My family never spoke of it directly. I wondered why an object with such bad connotations was placed in such a prominent place in our house anyway. Why wasn’t it banished to a box in the cellar? It seemed my family didn’t throw anything away—not even bad memories.

I wanted a cigarette, so I looked to see if anyone was around. The house was quiet—just the fans clicking and whirring. Grandpa was asleep on the couch next to me, mouth open and snoring. Mom and RosAnn were in town shopping for groceries. I went into the kitchen and slipped one of Dad’s Kool cigarettes into my pocket. He didn’t smoke much. In fact, I had never actually seen him smoke a cigarette, so I hoped he wouldn’t notice that his pack was shrinking. Grandma came into the kitchen with a big bowl of peas from the garden.

I’m going down to the lake, Grandma, I said on my way out. I’ll help shell the peas in a little while.

I was anxious to feel the nicotine in my lungs, but I felt guilty. I was on the lookout all the way down the hill, in case any of my family might be in the vicinity. I went directly down the steep slope and to the water, grabbing branches to steady myself as weeds tickled my legs. The shoreline was rocky there, and I sat down on my favorite boulder and lit up. The water lapped gently against the rocks. Watching the smoke curl around the overhanging branches relaxed me. Farther out in the lake, a pair of loons glided, calling to each other eerily. I squinted at the waves lit by the low westerly sun; it would be dusk in less than an hour. I tried hard to see everything before the scene disappeared with the light—the minnows darting in the shallow water near the rocky shore and the slimy, green lake weeds just on the surface moving in and out. Down at the dock, Dad was in the fishing boat, trying to start the motor.

Son of a bitch! Why won’t you start! He moaned pitifully and cursed as he continued pulling the cord like a madman. It was almost as though he was in hand-to-hand combat with the motor. The level of his frustration was frightening, and it seemed that he was in some kind of pain.

But I had experienced this scenario before with Dad. I quickly put out the cigarette and hid it under a rock. Suddenly, the peaceful moment was shattered. It was gone. He would eventually get the motor started, but the effort would take its toll on him; probably his blood pressure had shot up. It wasn’t healthy for him or me.

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I was ashamed. My first year at college had been a bitter failure in my estimation.

On the day they dropped me off at Sanford Hall on the Minneapolis campus, Mom and Dad looked scared; they knew that they couldn’t protect me here in the city. Terrible things happened on a daily basis to young women—potential predators lurked on every street corner. They were right to be worried.

Once classes started, I realized that I knew virtually nothing. In freshman composition class, I realized that I knew nothing about writing expository prose. In my humanities class, we read Voltaire and Locke, and I realized that I knew nothing about Enlightenment philosophers. I really couldn’t understand what the instructor was talking about either, because I had no background in critical thinking. In French class, I realized that I could hardly understand a word, even though I had taken it for two years in high school.

In addition to being academically unprepared for college, I was a social disaster. Because of my sheltered upbringing, I was particularly susceptible to corruption. I had never had a sip of alcohol. My hormones were raging. Not a good combination. A friend from Alexandria also lived in my dormitory. One day while we were sitting around in her room, she took out a pack of cigarettes, and we practiced smoking. Just like that, it became my primary vice for the next fifteen years.

The drinking and smoking and making out with people I barely knew grew into a festering knot of shame and guilt in my stomach. My parents would hardly have approved. In fact, they would be brokenhearted if they ever found out. To make matters worse, I soon found out that Dad had taken a job working on the highway crew in order to pay for my tuition and room and board. I felt that I wasn’t worthy of his efforts. I was so ashamed. That revelation was the final straw. I became depressed.

After that, I functioned in a haze of self-doubt and loneliness. The first quarter I earned a B average, but it went down from there. I finished the spring quarter with an overall C average. Even though I studied as hard as my friends, it never seemed to be enough; my grades were always a disappointment. Unfortunately, I was continuing down a path that had been well established in high school. Too shy to ask for help, I never talked to an instructor. Walking to class each day, I almost never encountered anyone I knew. This was not the college experience I had desperately hoped it would be.

During that first summer home, I thought seriously about quitting school. But the alternative was not attractive; staying in Alexandria and working as a waitress or cashier would be intolerable for me. That was my idea of total failure. Leaving home was to have been my transcendent act of rebellion, the great awakening that would finally help me achieve self-confidence and a sense of personal authority that I had never had growing up. But I had to overcome my limited high school education to escape; it was my only ticket out.

Across the country, students were demonstrating against the Vietnam War, but, being depressed, I was barely aware of it. Young men struggled to stay in school so that they wouldn’t be drafted. One day when I was in the Greyhound bus station in Minneapolis, waiting to go home, a fellow student from Alexandria came up and told me that he had been drafted. I saw the terror in his eyes. I should have said something, offered condolences—anything. Vietnam. It was a hell of a time. I should have been out there protesting. I added it to the list of things I wasn’t able to do.

While I was in college, I saw Vietnam vets come and go. They were popping up all over, but in my foggy state of mind, I didn’t recognize them at first. A lot of vets were going to school on the GI Bill, trying to fit in by hanging out at college parties with kids who were just slightly younger than they were. Of course, theirs was not the typical college experience of living in a dorm, being away from home for the first time, pledging a fraternity, and trying to get laid. Or even, on the other side of the spectrum, frequenting smoke-filled coffeehouses, reading Camus and radical newspapers, ingesting huge amounts of caffeine, trying to be intellectual, and trying to get laid.

I met a recently returned Vietnam vet at a college party once. I don’t remember the specific circumstances, the guy’s name, or even what he looked like. He offered me a ride home at the end of the night. I accepted reluctantly since I had known him for only a couple hours. I braced myself for the inevitable come-on, but it didn’t happen. He was quiet, polite, and distant, with a vacant look in his eyes. We really had nothing to talk about, and he didn’t seem interested in starting a conversation anyway. Maybe I mentioned the bad traffic just to break the uncomfortable silence. His reply stunned me.

The other day, I was driving along this highway, and a gook on one of those little scooters pulled in front of me. When he turned around and gave me that gook smile, I stepped on the gas and ran over him.

It wasn’t meant as a confession. He said it matter-of-factly—as if it were no different from any other experience. I was