Letters

Three winters ago I went out to the garage and brought inside a couple boxes that held the many letters David and I had written to each other over the course of six years. David had started letter writing when we first started to date. He carried a clip board with college ruled paper in his leather backpack. He had one of those heavy ball point pens, the type that you buy refills for instead of throwing them away. After a little while his clip board had my name tattooed on it along with his doodles.

There was a brick under my window that had a gap where a note could be wedged. Our letters ebbed when we were together and flowed when we were taking a break. And over-flowed when we were separated by long distance. I couldn't understand all the thoughts and feelings that poured out of David on to paper. His feelings were big. It felt too much, too soon for me. I didn't understand how at so young an age he could be so sure of himself that he wanted me- as a wife. I tease David sometimes that I married him because of his words - that I was powerless against them. His doting bordered on obsession and his melancholy intrigued me. It didn't help that he reminded me of my brother Trevor who was away on a mission when David and I first met. I idolized Trevor and thought that David possessed a similar nature that I was attracted to.

When I pulled those letters out and started to read them not too long ago, I was surprised at how painful it was at times. All the feelings, at once confusing and amorous, came back. But also, as I read them, I wondered where that love that David once had for me had gone. Had marriage and children and the difficulties that we face in the practical application of love made him change? Had David felt too much too soon for me that it had faded? I felt like my love had been growing steady. Maybe it was because I had been so careful (even stingy) about giving it away back then and now it could have full expression. (Not that I have ever been perfect in the expression of that love.)

I started to type out many of our letters. They are treasures to me and I worried about the what ifs. Like what if we had a flood or a fire and all our letters were gone and I had no record of them? David later told me that as I pored over those letters over the course of many weeks, he thought it was good for me so that I remembered that I loved him. I laughed inside because the real reason why I was typing those letters out and posting them was so that he would read them and remember that he loved me. I think we have both remembered.

Sometimes while we read these letters and are swept back into the past it is hard not to get carried away into revisiting the feelings we had. When I used to write about "him", the man I would marry, it caused David distress (because he wanted it to be him). Those old feelings can be conjured up even now and I remind David that "him" is him. All that wishful thinking and hopeful wishing came true.

For better or for worse.

We made it come true.

We are still making it come true.