For days I’ve been stuck in my parents’ post-Pearl Harbor correspondence, adrift in an age shrouded in confusion and fear. Maybe this is what it means to be a time traveler—not whisking back and forth in a souped-up DeLorian (though that would be more fun, and cleaner), but suspended outside of time, one foot in this world and the other elsewhere. It’s a little like visiting a live Nativity, or a battle reenactment, only more heart-stopping. Just when you begin to lose yourself, to be swept into the dream, someone steps onto the stage cloaked in a persona you half-recognize, and Mon Dieu, it’s the person who raised you.

Here, a photo of a young man who looks familiar (if you dressed him in tee shirt and ball cap, he could be one of my sons), and wow, it’s my father. There, a crumpled ID card. I examine the signature and discover that within half a year of her breezy, flower-strewn nuptials, my mother traded out her veil of ivory tulle for an Air Raid Warden’s helmet.

An Air Raid Warden? This is nigh on impossible. My mother, the belle of the ball, outfitted in khaki, with a whistle around her neck and a gas mask cinched to her belt? Glory be! I’ll have to ask her about this, I think, forgetting for a moment that she’s no longer in a position to answer. This happens often here in the attic. We find something that piques our interest (the egg carton stored in plastic, the vodka in a mayonnaise jar, my father’s silk “honeymoon pajamas”?!?), and my heart tilts down the stairs to the den, where Mom ought to be perched in her favorite chair, enjoying her meatloaf and Chardonnay.

If only we’d started this cleaning out business while she was still with us, you might say. If only, but alas, my mother wouldn’t have it. The very suggestion could bring her to tears. It was all my sister could do to toss the soured milk from the fridge during visits home.

You must know the people in your Sector well … reads the Handbook for Air Raid Wardens. To them, you are the embodiment of all Civilian Defense. You must seek to gain their confidence so that in any time of stress you may more easily reassure them and avert panic …

Uh, oh. Mom was a worry-wart, and somewhat prone to panic.

On patrol, your first duty is to clear the streets. People should be told to go to their homes. You must see that drivers park their automobiles at curbs and in such a manner as to leave a passage for fire engines and ambulances. Horses should be taken out of the shafts and tied to a lamp post …

Horses in shafts? In the streets of Atlanta, in 1942?

When the warning sounds after dark, the blackout will be enforced. You will warn householders of any light showing and if it is not at once turned out or covered, report the fact to the nearest policeman. 

This is so not my mother! She was well-liked, yes, charmer of bus driver and boss man alike, but she could order a dog to steal a bone and it would run the other way. And at five foot two and 104 pounds, could she be expected to direct traffic, and corral large animals? In disbelief, I dig around some more and there, in a stack of envelopes held together with a limp rubber band, is a pertinent letter penned by my father in Atlanta, who had yet to receive his orders, to my mother, in Florida at a friend’s wedding.

Dear Sweetie, I’ve just come from my warden’s meeting. My work as a warden is just beginning to interest me. Possibly it’s because I’m at last seeing the light–up until now I’ve had a very poor understanding of this war and our role in it. Perhaps in a few weeks I’ll begin to know what I’m supposed to do, but for now I’m sure of one thing–I’ve got to have an alternate warden, and there is only one person in this world I want as that alternate! 

Dad went on to point out my mother’s sweetness, reliability and strength of character. He was a persuasive guy, and sly like a fox, to coin one of his favorite clichés. I’ve found no evidence of my mother’s response, but the ID card is authentic, and dated June 1942, the same month as Dad’s letter. In fact, it’s dated before the postmark on the letter. I believe my father presumed, as he was wont to do. I imagine Mom didn’t much like that. I feel for her. The ink on their marriage license was hardly dry, their first apartment still lacking curtains–who knew what would be asked of them next? Many of her friends’ husbands had been shipped off. My uncle was about to be deployed to France.

I’m sure Mom bucked up. I bet she kept those khakis starched stiff, and her whistle polished to a sheen.