Letter #1: Greetings from an old patriot
Dear Fellow American,
My intention with these letters is to provide you not only with an enjoyable diversion, but also to attempt (though I'm sure I will often fail) to bring you a different perspective to the troubles we are currently facing in our Country, always in the light of what unites us rather than what divides us.
But I feel before I can do that, I must familiarize you with myself, and so I shall share some of my story with you now. Because who listens to anyone before they know something about them, or that they even care?
A troubled beginning
My name is not important. You may call me Old Patriot, for that is who I am. I was born in the year 1942, after my father had already been sent off to fight the Nazis. Like his father before him in WWI, he never returned home. And just like that, I had lost two of the most important men in my life before my first breath. But I am not bitter. I know what they were fighting for, and they are my heroes still.
As a result, I didn't have much growing up, being the third child (but only daughter) of a single mother, and unfortunately of the rambunctious sort. This added a lot of difficulty to my mother's already difficult life, and I don't think she very much liked me for it. Of course, I'll never truly know, because by the time I was ten she had died of pneumonia, and my siblings and I were sent to an orphanage. They didn't like me either.
Casted American steel
I made it through those difficult years, though they were certainly not the last of them. I won't bore you with all the details except to say that I married young (as was typical of the time) and had three kids of my own. Like my mother before me, my husband was drafted and killed in a war - Vietnam - and one of my brothers too. For those, I am bitter.
But I don't mean for all of this to sound so sad, it's just that it was, and while I've also had so many beautiful and wonderful years too, it was through the enduring trials of the difficult ones that I was cast into American steel. And that's life, I suppose, because I found a strength in myself that would have never been possible otherwise.
Ideals worth dying for
We do, in many ways, make our own fate, and that is true for us as a Country as well. We the People of the United States are not without fault. In fact, we have too many faults to count. We are humans, after all. But the fundamental ideals upon which this Country was built are shared by all of us, and it was for those same ideals that my family, and countless others, fought and died. And I believe they are ideals worth dying for.
While we may disagree about many things, I imagine it's akin to the right brain arguing with the left. It can be so frustrating, but that doesn't make it a good idea to cut out one of the halves (no matter how stupid the other half thinks it is). The better option is to accept that our reasoning is limited by our perspective, and that the common ground, based on shared values, is the strongest approach that often leads to the best results. But this is just an old lady speaking.
Final note
I will not venture, at this juncture, to take up any more of your precious time, for fear of wearing you out of me too quickly. One can only focus on the ramblings of an old woman for so long. I plan with the ensuing letters to be as brief as possible with the subjects I broach, while also trying to squeeze as much of the juice out as I can. We old ladies are just like that.
Your Faithful Friend,
Old Patriot
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