Nothing good ever came in the mail. Ever since Cline voided her Cosmopolitan subscription last year, the aluminum box had become the sole territory of Jennifer Cline, not Jen. Each day brought hospital bills, credit card statements and “URGENT” financial notices — the reminders of a life in disarray.
She walked out to the porch on a freezing weekday in January, feeling nauseated from the latest round of chemo, or maybe from the diet of scrambled eggs and Twizzlers, which had become the only foods she could keep down. Inside the box was a big yellow envelope, stamped first class from the White House, and Cline immediately thought: How did I get in so much trouble that now the president is involved?
She opened the envelope to find two pieces of cardboard taped together. Protected in between was another envelope, much smaller, and inside that envelope was a notecard adorned with the presidential seal.
Cline remembered the letter she had written to Obama three weeks earlier, and her hands started to shake. She carried the notecard into the kitchen and held it under the light: cursive handwriting, a grammatical error and small smudges of black ink.
Was it real? She thought so. She started to laugh, then scream.
“Jennifer,” the letter began, and this one was not from a bill collector.
I know we’ve all heard a million times that President Obama reads 10 letters every night, but this article is really, really good.