How times have changed

One drizzly morning, she sailed for the farthest tip of South America. He left the West Coast for Japan a few weeks later. They left knowing that they wouldn’t see each other for five years. No rendezvous in Hawaii, just because. No plane trips home for a sibling’s wedding or grandparent’s funeral. No phones or Internet. Letters would take weeks on the journey across the sea. That was all they had. That and memories and commitment. They’d write, send and, wait. Letters would cross; their stories lost sequence. Tenacious hearts endured. Five years later, they returned home and married. They’d promised.