Love, Ellen

I never got to meet my mother-in-law as my mother-in-law; she died four and a half years before I married her son. Fortunately, I had met Ellen decades earlier as a teenager dating her older son (now my husband) and, after he moved on to college and out of my league, as a friend and teammate of her younger son. Over the years, she kept me current on her older son’s life whenever she had a chance, knowing, I suspect, that he always occupied a warm spot in my heart. I like to think she would have been pleased to see us together finally.

I got to know Ellen posthumously after her son and I started planning a life together. I learned that she had served in England with the American Red Cross during World War II, despite the protests of her parents, and that it had been an adventure of a lifetime for the young, idealistic woman from Evanston. What I didn’t know until after I moved into my husband’s home (which had been built by his parents 45 years earlier) was that she documented much of her European adventure with letters, with photos, and with many of her Red Cross papers she worked with, and that those items, along with most of a lifetime of correspondence with her parents, were in the basement.

I have only skimmed the surface of the collection, which is in no particular order at present. The handful of letters I have read reveal that my mother-in-law was a lyrical and graceful writer, and that she gave deep thought to her purpose in life, whether serving her country or raising her family. All of them are signed the same way: Love, Ellen.

A picture of Ellen now sits on my desk, next to a photo of my husband. She is wearing her Red Cross uniform with her cap cocked at a precise 45° angle. Taken sixty-five years ago, the photo captures the confidence and pride she clearly felt in her civilian enlistment. Her wartime service lead to a lifetime love of all things English and the love of a lifetime when she met her future husband, a war-weary sergeant.

The writer in me thinks there may be a book in the basement in Ellen’s papers. I wonder whether she may have thought of telling her story herself one day, and that is why she held onto her papers. I think about doing the research and telling it myself. Whether I will be any more successful than she in getting it down on paper remains to be seen, but I already have a title: Love, Ellen.