Anonymous
本章内容导读
每一个人来到这个世界上，都带着一个特定的目的。
信可以使人与人之间紧紧地联系在一起，这是其他任何东西都无法取代的。它能让我们哭，可以使我们笑。一封充满爱的信比任何爱抚都令人感到亲切和温暖，因为它让世界变小……
To this day I remember my mum's letters.It all started in December 1941.Every night she sat at the big table and wrote to my brother Johnny，who had been drafted1 that summer.We had not heard from him since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
I didn't understand why my mum kept writing Johnny when he never wrote back.
'Wait and see—we'll get a letter from him one day，'she claimed.Mum said that there was a direct link from the brain to the written word that was just as strong as the light God has granted2 us.She trusted that this light would find Johnny.
I didn't know if she said that to calm herself，dad or all of us down.But I did know that it helped us stick together，and one day a letter really did arrive.Johnny was alive on an island in the Pacific.
I had always been amused by the fact that mum signed her letters，'Cecilia Capuzzi'，and I teased her about that.'Why don't you just write'Mum'？'I said.
I hadn't been aware that she always thought of herself as Cecilia Capuzzi.Not as Mum.I began seeing her in a new light，this small delicate woman，who even in high-heeled shoes was barely one and a half meters tall.
She never wore make-up3 or jewelry except for a wedding ring of gold.Her hair was fine，sleek4 and black and always put up in a knot in the neck.She wouldn't hear of getting a haircut or a perm.Her small silver-rimmed pince-nez only left her nose when she went to bed.
Whenever mum had finished a letter，she gave it to dad for him to post it.Then she put the water on to boil，and we sat down at the table and talked about the good old days when our Italian-American family had been a family of ten：mum，dad and eight children—five boys and three girls.It was hard to understand that they had all moved away from home to work，enroll in the army，or get married.All except me.
Around next spring mum had got two more sons to write to.Every evening she wrote three different letters which she gave to me and dad afterwards so we could add our greetings.
Little by little the rumour5 about mum's letters spread.One day a small woman knocked at our door.Her voice trembled as she asked：'Is it true you write letters？'
'I write to my sons.'
'And you can read too？'whispered the woman.
'Sure.'
'Read……please read them aloud to me.'
The letters were from the woman's son who was a soldier in Europe，a red-haired boy whom mum remembered having seen sitting with his brothers on the stairs in front of our house.Mum read the letters one by one and translated them from English to Italian.The woman's eyes welled up with tears.'Now I have to write to him，'she said.But how was she going to do it.
'Make some coffee，Octavia，'mum yelled to me in the living room while she took the woman with her into the kitchen and seated her at the table.She took the fountain pen，ink and air mail notepaper and began to write.When she had finished，she read the letter aloud to the woman.
'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.
After that day，when mum had written a letter for the woman，she signed it herself and her face brightened up in a smile.