Episodes
January 31, 1972: Ten Months In, Another One Knocked Off
Send a text January 31, 1972. The last day of the month. These are the final letters of January. Dick writes from Vietnam after receiving a stack of delayed mail, marking another month off his calendar. Sarah writes from home with a three-week-old baby, marking the same day through routine, weather…
January 30, 1972: Counting Time, Holding On
Send us a text January 30, 1972. Two letters written on a Sunday at the end of a long month. Sarah writes from home with a three-week-old baby, moving through loneliness, humor, exhaustion, money, and desire — marking time as January slips away. Dick writes from Vietnam, filling the hours, watching…
January 28, 1972: A Baby at Home, a Father Far Away
Send us a text January 28, 1972. Two letters written on the same day. Sarah writes from home, immersed in newborn care, errands, budgeting, and tentative steps back into the world — all with a baby in her arms. Dick writes from Vietnam, missing mail, passing time with friends, and thinking about th…
January 29, 1972: Love, Money, and Looking Ahead
Send us a text January 29, 1972. Two letters, written from opposite sides of the world. Sarah writes from home with a newborn, counting the days until her husband returns, talking candidly about exhaustion, intimacy, birth control, and the physical realities of becoming a family. Dick writes from V…
January 27, 1972: Loving From Afar, Loving at Home
Send us a text Three letters written on the same day. Dick writes from Vietnam, thinking about his wife and a baby girl he has yet to meet. Sarah writes twice — once in the early morning hours after a feeding, and again at night, exhausted and full of love — narrating newborn life in real time. Tog…
January 25–26, 1972: “56 Days and Open Arms”
Send us a text By late January 1972, Dick is still in Vietnam — now stationed in Saigon at Tân Sơn Nhất — writing home as both a husband and a father. His daughter has been born, but he has yet to hold her. These two letters, written on January 25 and 26, capture the tenderness, longing, humor, and…
January 25–26, 1972: “The World’s Greatest Baby”
Send us a text By late January 1972, Sarah is home alone with a newborn daughter, writing daily to her husband still in Vietnam. These letters from January 25 and 26 capture the texture of early motherhood — exhaustion, humor, vigilance, intimacy, and joy — as Sarah builds a life for their child wh…
January 22–24, 1972: Learning Motherhood in Real Time
Send us a text In these letters from January 22 through 24, 1972, Sarah Allgood writes from San Antonio as a brand-new mother, learning in real time how to care for her newborn daughter while waiting for her husband to come home from Vietnam. These are not polished reflections — they are raw, funny…
January 22–24, 1972: The Homestretch
Send us a text As Dick Allgood moves into the final stretch of his deployment, his letters begin to shorten and compress — full of longing, routine, and quiet anticipation. Across three days in January 1972, we hear a man counting the days, holding his family together from a war zone, and slowly be…
January 21, 1972: Holding a Family Across a War
Send us a text On January 21, 1972, Sarah and Dick Allgood write to each other from two different worlds — one from home with their newborn daughter, and one from Vietnam, counting down the days until he can finally return. These are no longer letters between two people imagining a family. They are…
January 18–20, 1972: Counting the Days-Dick
Send us a text In the days after his wife is alone with their newborn for the first time, Dick writes three letters from Vietnam — affectionate, practical, protective, and steadily counting the days until he comes home. Read together, these letters show a man already turning his life back toward hi…
January 18–20, 1972: The First Few Days Alone
Send us a text In the days after her mother leaves and she is alone with her newborn for the first time, Sarah writes three letters to Dick — tender, anxious, practical, funny, and deeply in love. Read together, these letters capture a young mother learning how to manage on her own: grief at separa…
January 15–17, 1972: Letters from Sarah
Send us a text In the days just after her daughter’s birth, Sarah writes four letters to Dick — candid, funny, hormonal, exhausted, practical, and deeply loving. Read together, these letters capture early motherhood in real time: physical recovery, desire returning, emotional swings, boundary-setti…
January 15–17, 1972: Dick Writes to His Family
Send us a text In the days following his daughter’s birth, Dick writes three letters from Vietnam — steady, protective, and deeply anchored in love. Read together, these letters show a father fully formed: reassuring his wife, responding to fear and exhaustion, and counting the days until he comes …
January 12–14, 1972: Letters from Dick
Send us a text In the week after his daughter is born, Dick writes three letters from Vietnam — steady, loving, and deeply present despite the distance. Read together, these letters show a man fully inside fatherhood: counting days, reshaping his routines, and writing not just to his wife, but into…
January 12–14, 1972: Women Writing Around Me
Send us a text In the days after her daughter’s birth, Sarah writes three letters from home — exhausted, joyful, overwhelmed, and fully inside motherhood. These letters are joined by one from her own mother, Gladden, writing to Dick from the middle of it all. Read together, they capture postpartum …
January 9–11, 1972: Writing to Me
Send us a text In the days immediately after his daughter’s birth, Dick writes three letters from Vietnam — the moment he learns the news, the quiet morning after, and the first days of fully knowing himself as a father. Read together, these letters trace the shift from shock to joy to settled love…
January 10–11, 1972: Written on My Behalf
Send us a text In the days immediately after giving birth, Sarah writes two letters to Dick from home — exhausted, joyful, in pain, and fully inside motherhood. Read together, these letters capture the reality of early postpartum life and the first days of writing not just as a wife, but as a mothe…
January 8, 1972: After I Was Born
Send us a text On January 8, 1972, Dick writes from Vietnam the day after his daughter is born — without knowing it yet. As the story crosses from waiting into arrival, the letters shift from imagining a child to writing into her life. This episode marks a turning point: the beginning of a woman le…
January 5, 1972: No News, Just Waiting
Send us a text The mail still isn’t moving. The phone still hasn’t rung. And neither of them knows what’s happening on the other side of the world. So they write anyway. My dad, stuck in silence in Vietnam. My mom, ordered to bed, in pain, and counting days. Here’s my dad, Dick. Support the show Th…
January 6, 1972: About Out of My Mind
Send us a text On January 6, 1972, Dick and Sarah write from opposite sides of the world as restlessness gives way to fragile relief. Dick feels isolated and nearly out of his mind as Benoit empties out and the mail still doesn’t reach him. Sarah, after days of intense pain, finds unexpected physic…
January 7, 1972: The Day I Arrived
Send us a text On January 7, 1972, Dick writes from Vietnam with no idea that this is the day his daughter is being born. Cut off from mail for nearly a week, restless and exhausted, he writes to Sarah about waiting, worrying, and holding on to the promise of a life just days away. There is no lett…
January 4, 1972: Almost Parents
Send us a text On January 4, 1972, Dick and Sarah write from opposite sides of the world as the waiting becomes unbearable. Dick is jittery, nervous, and desperate to know if they are parents yet, while Sarah—cold, exhausted, and in pain—shares the physical realities of late pregnancy and her hope …
January 3, 1972: Counting Days, Talking for Real
Send us a text January 3, 1972 is a day of counting and imagining. Dick writes from Vietnam, off duty and restless, tracking football wins, movies, meals, and the shrinking number of days until he can hold his wife and baby. Sarah writes from San Antonio, pregnant and uncomfortable, counting down f…