Coming Home

The summer of 2009, I was fresh out of college, back at home, and working on a very part-time basis at Gap Kids/BabyGap in the St. Louis Galleria. Unexpectedly, this included the occasional hazard of being karate-chopped by toddler-sized mannequins. It was not an occupational hazard I wanted to deal with much longer, but I didn’t know what came next. I no longer had a parent-directed path.

I had enjoyed working in the archives in college, but I wanted some kind of proof that it was the right career for me. What if I spent years and tens of thousands of dollars to get a master’s degree and then… didn’t like the job?

In August, through a connection of a connection of a connection, I was hired on a very short-term basis by a historical society. For two months, I would be a part-time transcriptionist, typing up letters written during the Civil War. Two months to figure out if I wanted to be an archivist for the rest of my life.

I quickly found that being an archivist involved many trade-offs. The historical society might have a beautiful library flooded with natural light, but the archivists worked in the windowless basement. I might not be dressing toddler mannequins, but the computer I used was so ancient it didn’t have a USB drive, and transferring files required a Rube Goldberg-type workaround. I might be transcribing letters written during an important time in our nation’s history, but the letters themselves were not very interesting. I had expected some drama in the letters, but the drama mostly came from two new occupational hazards: sitting in an office chair that gave me back pain at 22, and getting dirty looks from someone I tried to switch chairs with.

Archiving was kind of monotonous, both in terms of the work and what was becoming chronic pain by office chair.

And then I came to some letters from a soldier writing home.

He’s chatty, charming, and tells his parents stories about anything and everything the way I tell my parents. One after another, pages of stories about mundane things happening at the camp he’s stationed at, worries that his earlier letters have been mislaid, questions about what his parents and siblings are doing at home. I transcribed three letters and got to the fourth one, expecting more of the same, wanting to learn more about him and his family, hoping to hear what the plans for his unit were.

I opened the next letter, and it’s not from the soldier, the son. The next letter is from the son’s commanding officer and the CO is sorry, but the son was killed.

The CO is sorry, the soldier was a good man, but the son is not coming home. The son didn’t come home and it’s 150 years later and I’m holding the last evidence of the son’s life, proof of his life and death. One hundred and fifty years later and I’m holding a letter that the son’s parents and siblings and their descendants kept safe for decades upon decades upon decades.

One hundred and fifty years later and I was holding proof of love—the love that had kept the son’s letters safe, the love that wanted this man’s story told. Proof of love that even I, a very part-time archivist fresh out of college, was a part of—simply by helping make his words available online. Proof of love for me too, that I had found what I wanted to do.