2020 has been a year of reflection and one that has reminded me about various different stories & lessons I learned throughout my life.
Recently, these nostalgic feelings sent me on a search for tons of quality pictures to use on social media for the trends #TransformationTuesday, #ThrowbackThursday, & #FlashbackFriday.
As I dug through boxes of old family pictures and photo albums at my parents’ house, I stumbled upon a mysterious white plastic bag that was buried under a massive amount of photo negatives.
My inner Goonies kid was immediately intrigued to find out what was in the bag. I definitely couldn’t pass on the opportunity of possibly finding a treasure map inside and setting sail on a wild adventure.
I opened the plastic bag and what I found blew my mind. Inside the plastic bag where tons of pen pal letters that my parents sent to each other leading up to their engagement! I had always heard about these supposed “platonic” letters, but never had seen them with my own eyes before.
Instead of pretending that I never found these pen pal letters, I decided to ask my parents all about these letters.
What they told me could have been the reason for such show’s like Netflix’s Love is Blind or TLC’s 90-day Fiancé.
Becoming Pen Pals
“I was on tour as a singer with a band in Saipan at the time. I remember your dad coming to our show with a group of his Coast Guard friends once or twice & somehow, we all ended up hanging out after the band finished our set,” my mom, Noemi, recalls.
She doesn’t remember the exact reasoning why or how the band ended up hang out with the group of “coasties”, “I mean I was in a band made up of a group of girls, so you know how it is when foreign women see military guys.”
My mom describes their initial meeting as very brief during some time in the early 80’s before staying connected as pen pals. However, my dad is a wiz at remembering dates and filled in the gaps of their first meetings.
“She doesn’t remember?” he asks, “Our first meeting was over the course of a full week in December of 1983, not just once or twice. I went to that bar to see them perform every night I was in Saipan.”
According to him, his ship docked for a full seven days and coincidently they both were leaving Saipan the same day and saw each other at the airport. “Their contract had just finished and were all headed back to the Philippines, I saw them in the international line and got a mailing address to send letters to from her. But it was an address to send all of the band letters.”
The pair eventually began writing to just each other as well as brief phone conversations when my mom got access to a phone when she was on base in the Philippines. “We wrote each other frequently, me more than him, but at one point I got only one or two letters from him in a like 3 months or so,” Noemi says.
“Oh, that’s because at that time I had a girlfriend. So, I was focusing on that & couldn’t write as much,” Bob chimes in.
*the look on my mom’s face hearing this revelation was PRICELESS*
“Wow, I’m so glad I’m here to listen to your interview…I didn’t know you had a girlfriend for a short period of time”. Before my dad, my mom says she never had a boyfriend or even went out on a date.
Becoming a Couple
I had always imagined my parents love story as this epic long-distance relationship until doing a deep dive into more specific details. My idea of their story was completely shatter.
After Bob drops the girlfriend bomb, Noemi continues, “We really only wrote to each other & had the occasional phone call over the next year. There was a time that he apparently was in the Philippines for a month, but he didn’t tell me because he was visiting someone else”.
At this point in the interview I was very confused about the timeline of their relationship. My parents got married on Thanksgiving Day in 1985, so hearing they were still platonic friends at the beginning of 1985 was shocking.
“So, I broke up with my girlfriend in January 1985 because it wasn’t working & I wanted something serious,” Bob had continued to correspond with my mom and really thought long and hard about what he wanted.
“From January to March 1985 we had been talking very frequently and much more seriously about things. In March, I went to visit her for a full week and by the end I popped the question!”
I was completely shook at this point. It took me a moment to comprehend what he had just said. I had to ask, “Wait, are you saying you guys didn’t see each other from the time in Saipan until this trip to the Philippines?”.
Receiving a nod from both parents, I continued, “So, if I did the math correctly and add the week in Saipan and the week in the Philippines…you physically ONLY saw each other for a total of 14 days before getting engaged?”.
“That’s correct,” said Bob. “We had been righting for a long time and really got to know each other that by the time we saw each other again, the foundation of a friendship was already there & it turned into courting”.
My mind couldn’t comprehend this reality dating show type story in which my parents were only romantically interested in each other for around 90 days before getting engaged.
For my mom & dad it just made sense and was never a question of if they did the right thing. Obviously, it worked for them since they had me in October 1989, three years later my sister was born in September 1992, & will be celebrating 35 years of marriage this month.
It’s hard to believe that there was once a time in which individuals who were “talking” had to wait weeks, sometimes months, to receive responses back to any letters they had sent. In today’s society that is unheard of with the growth of smartphones and having everything right at your fingertips.
I think this story proves that we need to bring back an old school approach to dating & talking because it might lead to more successful relationships in the long run.
Trend of the ways couples met from 1960 - Present Day. Meeting at a bar (as my parents did) was the 2nd highest way to meet someone in the 80's. Infographic by Visual Capitalist.
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