An Interview with Bob Zielsdorf, cont'd
Read Sealed with a Kiss and you will smile; read it and you will laugh; read it and you will fall in love again, with life and with our country when it is at its best. —Father Jonathan Morris, Program Director, The Catholic Channel, SiriusXM
people who have written great letters.
Sealed with A Kiss couldn’t have been written had Fran and I not preserved our letters. That fact made me interested in stories based on documents that are saved or rediscovered. A favorite is Lily Koppel’s The Red Leather Diary, which begins when the author finds the diary of another woman in some discarded boxes from a New York apartment house.
What was it like raising children who dated and married in a very different time, with very different manners, styles, and mores?
It was hair-raisingly scary. We just did our best to convey our values with the expectation that our kids would accept them. At the same time, we realized that times had changed and that peer pressures and new societal mores would draw them to create their own sets of values. It became a matter of balancing ideal expectations with reality. I guess it worked, since Fran and I are both immensely proud of the adults they have become and of the way they are raising their own kids.
I read lots of different kinds of nonfiction. Having just written a book about letters, I’m naturally interested in books about or based on them. To name just one example, Thomas Mallon, who also wrote a book about diaries and journals, created a book called Yours Ever: People and Their Letters. It talks about the many reasons people write letters—absence, complaint, friendship, advice—and offers glimpses of the fascinating
Many of us today have long-distance relationships even after we’re married. What advice would you give us from your own experience?
My business career demanded that I be away from home often, occasionally for weeks at a time. So I understand from personal experience that distance is one of the greatest stressors on a marriage. I can only suggest that you examine the reasons for the separation fully, then start making the compromises that will allow it to end. In the meantime, don't just rely on phone calls, emails, and texts to stay in touch. Write each other a letter once in a while—a real one, handwritten on paper. You might be surprised at how much such letters express and how long they are cherished.
