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| photo credit: sewtracy.blogspot.com |
My friend came from a large Italian/Irish family with six kids. They didn’t have nearly enough nickels to rub and were squeezed into a seriously small flat in Queens, New York. He said life was chaotic in their household.
His
mother was gregarious, the life of every party, and Irish. She laughed, danced and told a great joke.
His
father was soberly reserved and unemotional. A man who gave his son $100, shook
his hand and wished him good luck as he drove himself to college in Milwaukee.
Both
have been gone since long before I even knew him.
He said
one of his sisters recently found a box of old letters. Love letters between his parents.
One
letter stood out as special. Completely unexpected. There wasn’t enough opportunity, he explained, for outward displays of affection amidst the constant comings and goings of his family. It was dated after all six children were born.
The
small block print of this letter told a different story. It detailed the deep love
and desire a soberly stoic man had for his beautifully extroverted wife. Even
then. During the frustration, disorder and confusion they called daily life.
As
he shared more about the letters with me, I saw happiness radiating from him. And
the romantic in me was intoxicated. I am in love with love letters.
His
story immediately got me thinking of how exciting it would be for our children to stumble upon such private
sentiments of love between their father and mother after we are gone. Words documenting our
feelings for each other during decades of marriage. There
are plenty of them.
But
then I remembered there were other
letters out there too.
Letters
that were not between him and me but between me and someone else; someone who once
held a special place in my heart. These letters, I sent to my best friend over
twenty-five years ago asking her to keep them safely tucked away because I wasn’t ready yet to terminate their existence.
What
if they resurfaced someday?
What
if we are, all three of us, gone and they find their way back to our children’s
hands?
What
if? What if? What if?
A
sense of panic washed over me.
That’s
not what I want.
I
want them to unexpectedly discover our love notes when they are parents
themselves. To understand even though we seemed stressed out more often than
not, we were very much in love. Even though we argued (mainly) over parenting
and especially when they were in high school, we loved each other no less. To realize
no love is perfect, but still beautiful nonetheless. Their father and mother
had a romantic love that sustained a half-century or more. To feel intoxicated and
proud in this knowledge.
That’s what I want.
That’s what I want.
I’ve
never asked her if she still has those old letters; if she’s ever
read them (and I wouldn’t care if she had). If she does, I will ask her to shred them so they cease to exist.
I
need to call her.
This
was written for www.yeahwrite.me. Please wander over following this link. You won’t
be disappointed with what you’ll find there!
