If you have never had occasion to write a love letter, a real love letter to your one and only love separated from you by time and great distance, then you have been, or one day will be, deprived of something quite special—the memories that flood the mind and all but drown the heart as you sit quietly, one day many years on, reading that letter again.
In a small blue suitcase in our bedroom closet Prentice has preserved every letter that I wrote to him during several months when we were apart in 1971, the darkest, loneliest and unhappiest days of my life. In the same suitcase I keep all the letters he wrote to me during those same months. I don’t suppose I have ever counted them, but they are many.
For almost forty years that suitcase has held safe our most private communications, our most intimate thoughts and emotions. Tonight it occurred to me that our suitcase full of letters will not remain private forever. One day when we are gone, our son will open the suitcase, take the letters from their envelopes and read what, for now, remain our secret words for one another.
I know that he will not see the letters with our eyes. There is much written between the lines that only we can see, only we can know. Still, I wonder if he will see at all beyond the mere words written in ink on each page. I wonder if any measure of the pain, hurt, fear, longing, loneliness and hope soaked so deeply into the fibers of each sheet will pour out into his hands as he holds the letters, just as the indelible memories stain my hands each time I touch those treasures again.
I don’t open the suitcase often. The letters aren’t for every day, but for those times when life gets especially hard. When I am tired, when money is tight, when I’m disappointed, when things just aren’t going right and life is difficult. When there can be seen no light at the end of the tunnel. The letters recall to my mind a time when a strong young boy and a girl on fire with love proved that love alone is sufficient armor against the ravages of scandal and weapons of fear, a rock sufficient to weather any storm.
How young we were! How young we are again when I read those letters. Youth is precious, and we wasted not one moment of it. We stored it up like wine, and we can squeeze it yet from the pages of those letters so pregnant with the sweet flavors of youth, life and love.
In the first of his letters to me, dated March 16, 1971 Prentice began with a quotation:
“Absence is to love as wind is to fire. It extinguishes the small and kindles the great.”
The stormy winds of the months that followed fanned the flames out of control. The fire has never been contained.
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I am so glad that you two are sharing your life before I came to know you. I am not only entertained by your posts, but also enlightened – not only about you two, but also about me and mine. Thank you.
I have often thought there is an art to letter writing. I mean the real kind, not emails or texts or posts or twitters but a real bonafide sheet of paper or card that someone has written their most private thoughts for your eyes alone.
My dear Mom has always understood this art and to this day, I receive a lovely handwritten card once a week from her and since I’ve been an adult, I share the same with her. It has become our little “thing” that we do being 600 miles apart.
I treasure each card or letter and keep them all in a shoebox. Each time I read one I am reminded of how I am still her little girl and she’s my Mom and the world can be made right regardless of the chaos that may swirl around me.
Thank you for reminding me once again how special they are.