To this day I remember my mum's letters. It all started in December 1941. Every night she sat at the big table in the kitchen and wrote to my brother Johnny,who had been drafted that summer. We hadn't heard from him since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.（珍珠港）
I didn't understand why my mum kept writing to 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 Godhas granted us. She trusted that this light would find Johnny.
I don't know if she said that to calm herself,dad or all of us down. But I do know that it helped us stick together,and one day a letter really did arrive. Johnny was alive on an island in the Pacific.（太平洋）
Mum signed her litters,"Cecilia Capuzzi.""Why don't you just write 'Mum'?"I asked.
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.
She never wore make-up or jewelry except for a wedding ring. Her hair was fine,sleek and black and always put up in a knot in the neck（盘在颈后）. Her small silver-rimmed prince-nez（小银丝眼镜） 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.
Around next spring mum had got two more sons to write to. Every evening she wrote three different letters which she gave to dad and me afterwards so we could add our greetings.
Little by little the rumor about mum's letters spread. One day a small woman knocked at our door. Her voice trembled（颤抖）as she asked:"Is it true you write letters?"
"I write to my sons."
"And you can read too?"whispered the woman.
"Sure."
The woman opened her bag and pulled out a pile of airmail letters. "Read... please read then aloud to me."
The letters were from the woman's son who was a soldier in Europe,a red-haired boy who 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 airmail 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（写信员）in our part of town. Sometimes she would write letters all day long.
Mom always insisted that people signed their own letters, and the small woman with the grey hair asked mum to teache 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.
One day when she came to us, all hope had disappeared from her eyes. Mum instantly knew what had happened. They stood hand in hand for a long time without saying a word. Then mum said:"We better go to church. There are certain things in life so great that wo cannot comprehended （理解）them." When mum came back home, she couldn't get the red-haired boy out of her mind.
On one occasion mum admitted that she had always had a secret dream of writing a novel. "Why didn't you?" I asked.
She tried to explain why it absorbed her so. "All people in this word are here with one particular purpose,"she said."Aapparently, mine is to write letters."
"A letter unites people. It can make them cry,it can make them laugh. There is no caress more lovely and warm than a lover letter,because it makes the world seem very small, and both sender and receiver become like kings in theirs own kingdoms. My dear, a letter is life itself!"
Today all mum's letters are lost. But those who got them still talk about her and cherish（珍藏）the memory of her letters in their hearts.
明天就在眼前
