I'm an Army wife, a mom of two (Marisa is 7 and Danny is 4), and for the past year and a half I've been the one who organizes the care package packing parties for our Family Support Group here on post. My husband has been deployed twice since we married, most recently to Bosnia last year, and I learned everything on this page the hard way: by sending him a box of chocolate in July.

Right now we have soldiers from our post in Bosnia and Kosovo, and some in Kuwait and in Korea on the one-year tours, and every one of them has a mailbox that is either full or empty. Our job is to make it full. A box from home doesn't have to be fancy. It has to get there, it has to be in one piece, and it has to say somebody was thinking about you. That's it. This page is everything I know about doing those three things.

If you're a spouse, a parent, a Sunday school class, a scout troop or just a neighbor who wants to send a box to a soldier, I hope this helps. And if you're near us, come to the party.

Next party: Saturday, October 16, 1999, 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., in the big room at the Family Support Center. Bring your kids; there's a coloring table and the little ones decorate the inside of the box lids, which the soldiers tell us is their favorite part.

Here's how it works. Everybody brings something from the "ships well" list below, or a few dollars toward postage, or just their two hands. We set up an assembly line down two long tables: box, packing paper, snacks, toiletries, something to read, something from the kids, a note, tape. Everybody takes a turn writing the notes. We fill out the customs forms in a big stack at the end (I bring them from the post office), and one of us drives it all to the post office Monday morning.

Last month, September 18, we packed 61 boxes in three hours with 22 people. Our record is 74. For October we'd like to send every single soldier from our post who's in Bosnia or Kosovo a box before the weather turns, and that means about 90. So please come, and please bring a friend who's never come.

Most needed for October: wool socks (the good kind), lip balm, hand warmers, hot cocoa packets, beef jerky, AA batteries and paperback books. We are fine on candy, thank you; we could open a store.

If you'd like to sponsor a whole box (about $25 including postage) for a soldier who doesn't get much mail, e-mail me. There is always somebody who doesn't get much mail, and the first sergeants know who.

These are the things soldiers actually ask for, over and over, in the letters that come back. Think "tough, small and useful." A box takes anywhere from ten days to three weeks to get to Bosnia, longer to some places, and it gets thrown, stacked, sat on and left on a hot tarmac along the way.

Not forbidden, just a bad idea, or fine only in the right season. Learn from my chocolate.

• Chocolate of any kind from about April to October. In November through February a bag of M&M's in a zip bag inside a plastic tub is usually fine. Ask me how I know.
• Anything in a glass jar. Peanut butter, salsa, hot sauce, jelly: buy the plastic squeeze kind. If it only comes in glass, don't send it.
• Aerosol cans (see below; they're not allowed anyway). Shaving cream, deodorant and hair spray in a tube or stick instead.
• Chips arrive as chip dust. Pringles in the can survive. Pretzels do all right.
• Homemade fudge, frosted anything, soft cookies, fruitcake without a tin. If it's homemade, it has to be a hard cookie, packed tight, in a tin or a coffee can with the lid taped.
• Fresh fruit, cheese, meat that isn't jerky or canned. It won't be fresh in three weeks and it may not be allowed through.
• Liquids in general. Put every liquid (shampoo, lotion, mouthwash) in its own zip-top bag, with the cap taped down. Then put those bags in another bag. One leaking bottle of shampoo ruins a whole box of magazines and photos; I've seen it.
• Anything perfumed near anything edible. Soap and cookies in the same box means soap-flavored cookies. Pack toiletries at one end and food at the other, in separate bags.

The post office has rules for the mail in general, and then each APO or FPO address can have its own restrictions depending on the country. The rules change, so before you mail, ask at the post office counter what the restrictions are for that ZIP code. They have it on a list. In general, though:

• No aerosol cans and no flammable anything: lighters, lighter fluid, matches, nail polish and nail polish remover, perfume in quantity.
• No alcohol. Not in the box, not in a candy, not in a mouthwash you're hoping nobody checks.
• No firearms, ammunition, fireworks or knives that aren't a plain pocketknife, and check even that.
• Nothing obscene and no pornography. This one is enforced.
• For the Middle East (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and neighbors): no pork or pork products, so read the label on the jerky and the crackers, and no religious materials in bulk meant for distribution. A soldier's own Bible or a single one from home is fine.
• No cash. If you want to send money, send a phone card or a money order.
• Nothing over 70 pounds or over 108 inches in length and girth combined, which you won't come near unless you're sending a sofa.

Also, please, don't send things the soldier has to carry. A big heavy hardcover book, a bulky stuffed animal, a fruitcake the size of a brick: whatever you send, they either use it up, share it, or haul it. Little and useful. Little and useful.

This scares people off and it shouldn't. Every package to an APO or FPO address overseas needs a customs form, even though you're paying domestic postage. For an ordinary care package you use the small green form, PS Form 2976, which is a sticker you fill out and stick on the box. (Anything worth more than $400, which no care package is, needs the long white form, 2976-A, in the plastic pouch.) You can pick up a handful of the green forms at the counter to fill out at home, which is what we do at the party.

What goes on it:

• Your name and address, and the soldier's full military address (see below).
• A list of what's inside, in plain words: "snacks, toiletries, magazines, socks." You don't have to itemize every granola bar. Do say "used clothing" or "gift" where it applies.
• A rough value in dollars. Be honest and modest; $30 is typical.
• Check the box for "gift."
• Sign and date it.

The address has to be exactly right. Get it from the soldier or the spouse, and copy it letter for letter, including the unit line and the APO line with the two-letter "state" (AE for Europe and the Middle East, AP for the Pacific) and the full ZIP code. Never put the country name on it (no "Bosnia"); it can get routed into the foreign mail and take months. The military postal system does the rest.

Write the address on the box in permanent marker and put a slip of paper with both addresses inside the box, in case the label gets torn.

The good news that surprises everybody: mail to an APO or FPO address is charged at domestic rates, not international. You pay the same as you'd pay to send that box across your own state, because the military carries it from the U.S. gateway on. So:

• Priority Mail is what we use. A shoebox-sized package of two to five pounds usually runs us between $4 and $8 depending on weight. It's the fastest way without paying for express, and the post office gives you the boxes and the tape free if you ask for Priority Mail supplies.
• Parcel Post is a dollar or two cheaper and a week or two slower, and slower is a real cost when the cookies are in there.
• A typical box from our party, with about $18 of contents and Priority postage, comes to $25 or a little less. That's a nice round number for a sponsor.

Weigh the box on the bathroom scale before you go, and take the customs form already filled out, and you'll be at the counter about two minutes. Go on a weekday morning if you can; the post office here on a Saturday before a holiday is a place you don't want to be with a four-year-old.

Holiday deadlines: the post office puts out the mail-by dates for overseas military mail every fall. For last Christmas, the cutoff for Priority Mail to Europe was around the second week of December, and Parcel Post was mid-November. Watch for this year's dates in November, and mail early. Really early. A Christmas box that arrives in January is still a wonderful thing, but it's not the same.

The best part of this job is the mail that comes back. We put a note in every box asking the soldier to let us know it arrived, and a lot of them do. With their permission, and first names only, here are a few from this year.

I keep every one of these in a binder. On the days when it seems like a lot of work to buy 90 boxes of baby wipes, I read the binder.