“How did you know that was exactly what I wanted to say?”
“I often sit and look at my boys'letters, just like you, without a clue about what to write.”
A few days later the woman returned with a friend, then another one and yet another one-they all had sons who fought in the war, and they all needed letters. Mum had become the correspondent in our part of town. Sometimes she would write letters all day long.
Mum always insisted that people signed their own letters, and the small woman with the grey hair asked mum to teach her how to do it.“I so much want to be able to write my own name so that my son can see it.”Then mum held the woman's hand in hers and moved her hand over the paper again and again until she was able to do it without her help.