Letters and letter writing have always been an enjoyable hobby of mine, so signing up to write to a soldier in the Middle East just seemed like a lot of fun to do. However, in my attempts to encourage and cheer someone I didn’t know, I never expected to meet the love of my life.
It started so innocently—with a letter that went something like this:
“January 16, 2008
Hi, Doug
My name is Amanda Jacobs, and you have been assigned to me by AdoptaPlatoon Soldier Support Effort. I was reading about this organization in a magazine article I found … and thought getting involved would be an adventure and potentially fun …
A little basic background information might be helpful … I am 45 years old, divorced with a nine-year-old girl. We live in Rochester, New York in a house we call “The Yellow House” with our funny cat, Jewel …
Here is a recent picture …”
A few months earlier, I was at my gym on an elliptical trainer when I stumbled upon and read about a volunteer organization called AdoptaPlatoon. Started by a group of mothers whose sons were deployed, these extraordinary women organize volunteers to write letters and send packages to our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. I thought it was a wonderful organization, so I signed up.
In mid-January 2008, I received my first Soldier Delivery Letter. The only information I was given was this: Doug Stearns, 48, single, deployed from Ft. Lewis, Washington. The letter also included his address where I was to write, and a cutoff date when I was to stop writing. There was nothing else.
My initial reaction was laughter, and I asked myself, “What have you gotten yourself into?” And … “What is a single, 48-year-old man doing in the middle of a desert?” It was a moment of pure joy! And, in that moment, I decided to be myself and just write … to just write and tell someone about my crazy, wonderful life—not worrying about what he thought. My job was to write a man I did not know, and all that man had to do was receive the letter. What he chose to do beyond that point was his own business.
With that attitude, I wrote every couple of days. I wrote about my day-to-day activities, about my friends, about my work … about anything that might make a person feel good. I tried to include a picture each time too. I was having so much fun that I was surprised when I realized I was getting so much joy from the writing process because I was looking at my life through a happy lens—and sharing it.
As a highly creative artist who composes music, writes plays and poetry, my life is very full. I am ‘on the go’ all the time going to concerts, watching plays, going to movies, working on my compositions, teaching, raising a child. My days are never routine, and I began to notice how writing to Doug made me feel as if I was keeping a journal –recording all the happiness.
It is funny now, but I never expected him to write me back. My life is not a normal one, and I thought the openness with which I wrote would scare him off. The fun part for me, was that I didn’t care if it did.
The AdoptaPlatoon organization will tell you too, that if you sign up to support a soldier with cards and letters, the soldiers may or may not write back. They are not obligated to do so, but you are obligated to write them. Also, most people I know don’t write letters… I accepted this fact, so I never expected anything. Imagine my surprise, when I received my first letter from Doug.
One cold February afternoon, a brown envelope appeared in my mailbox. It took me a few moments to figure out who it was from. It had no postage and only the words “FREE MAIL” where a postage stamp was supposed to go. Noticing the return address and postmark, I realized it was from Doug and it had taken about a week for the letter to reach me.
It was a wonderful letter and I hungrily read it while I drank a hot cup of coffee in my kitchen. Doug wrote that he had received three of my letters, and he had enjoyed them all. He shared a little bit about himself and told me he was a career soldier who had been in the Army for 31 years, that he was a divorced father of three children –all of whom had been in the Army and his entire family had served in the Middle East.
His life was so different from mine, and I loved hearing about it. It was different; he was different. Here was a man who knew who he was. He knew what he could do and what he could not do. It was GREAT! He mentioned that he had left home when he was 17-years old and had never looked back because he enjoyed his life in the military and that he lived a ‘charmed life’. I liked him instantly. He made me laugh.
Receiving his letter encouraged me to write more, and over the next three months, we exchanged several letters, By April, I started to feel frustrated because he never sent pictures. I had no idea what he looked like, so I imagined him in many combinations –short, tall, pot-bellied, bald, with glasses, etc.—and told him so in a letter. I also told him he might not like what I was imagining and instructed him that his mission, (if he chose to accept it) was to have someone take a picture of him and email it to me.
About a week later, I received this email:
”Hi Amanda, I just received a letter with your email address so decided to take advantage of it. … I will include a pic of my short fat self, but hey! I don't want to hear the scream all the way over here, and hey! Please try not to push the panic button too many times, OK? Let me know if this email gets to you. Email is easier for me, I don't like to hand write anything, my penmanship is embarrassingly terrible, and our printers are off-line more often than not. If this email gets thru I will answer more of your questions. Doug “
When his picture, popped up on my computer screen, my heart went pitter-pat. He was not fat, either. He was a gorgeous soldier man—the kind of man I had always imagined for myself. It was a wonderful feeling and I kept thinking that I must be crazy because I was falling for someone I had never met. But I couldn’t help myself … so I kept on writing.
Once we got to the email stage, our correspondence increased. With emails, we were able to get to know each other through our words and the pictures we shared from our lives. The more we wrote, the more it seemed we wanted to know about each other.
Then in early June 2008, Doug wrote to tell me that he was going home to Ft Lewis.
I was very sad about this because my responsibility for writing to him through AdoptaPlatoon was coming to an end and I didn’t know if Doug wanted the correspondence to continue. I hoped that he did! I knew that I definitely wanted to meet him, but the distance … he would be in WASHINGTON.
So I wrote … telling him that I would miss being his AdoptaPlatoon girl, and that our writing to each other had been so much fun. He responded with similar feeling and told me that if I felt like shooting him an email when he was back in Washington, he wouldn’t mind reading it.
He made me laugh. (He always makes me laugh.) He also told me there was a possibility her would be visiting his family in Pennsylvania that Fall.
Throughout the months Doug was in Kuwait, I talked a lot about my work as a composer/playwright, my work with my writing partner, and our work in adapting Jane Austen’s novel, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE into a musical. In October 2008, a producer presented a Staged Concert Reading of our show in the Eastman Theater in Rochester, New York. It was a high profile Gala Event with Broadway performers and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. I wanted Doug to be my date.
My thought was: If Doug can withstand this kind of pressure and scrutiny from my work, we will either be friends for life, or he will run screaming in the opposite direction. I needed to know.
To my surprise, he accepted my invitation to come for the Gala. His acceptance increased our correspondence, and we began to instant message and talk by phone.
When he arrived at my house in October, it was instant physical attraction. Everything about being with Doug was right. During the Gala, he was wonderfully supportive and instinctively understood my needs during a very critical time with my work. He was unfazed by the glamour, and seemed to know how to help me without my having to tell him. He was awesome.
Following the Gala and during Doug’s visit with me, we knew we were in love with each other—madly, deeply, passionately. We were old enough to recognize that what was happening between us is beautiful and rare. Our meeting was a miracle of love.
We agreed to keep seeing each other and are talking about getting married now. We don’t know what will happen because we still face the issues of a long distance relationship (There are complications on both ends.), and Doug has another deployment coming up in January 2011. We do see each other one week each month, (It is very romantic.) and we talk through Yahoo Messenger and webcam every day.
Right now we just have faith in love. It is enough.
Love is enough. That is its miracle.
We both know that love was powerful enough to bring us together through our words. And if love can do THAT, then love has the power to keep us together.
