Love letters

I recently came across a beautiful blog where the author shared some of her old love letters from over the years. They ranged from comical to deeply romantic and personal, as different as each love. Feeling inspired I decided to brave our very scary basement, digging through boxes of old memories. I hunted and sifted through piles of saved treasures from over the years, sure that I had saved and could thus unearth some romantic old letters. Curated so that I could someday show them to my daughters and remember the breathless flush of my first young love. What I excavated with was not exactly what I expected.

My first ever "love letter" was a note passed to me during math class in the seventh grade. The cutest boy in school told me in the note that he really liked me (squeal) and then proceeded to go on and on about the girl he use to like that he didn't like anymore. Looking at it with grown up eyes it was more a hate letter for her than a love letter for me. Maybe it was a bad omen of things to come. The letters and notes didn't get much better. There was one scribbled on a napkin by a boy I briefly dated during university. It read "You smell good and your butt looks good in those pants, when do you get off work? I need a backrub." What a Casanova. I sifted and searched and sifted and searched some more. There were letters from one guy who told me that some girls were like Christmas lights, and I was like the lights that twinkle. Sweet, but probably directly off a Hallmark card.

I uncovered a few longer letters with guarded hints of love and adoration. Dozens of sweet letters until one day they proclaimed a new indifference. Indifference, I think, is the worst way to feel about a person. I would take hate over indifference any day. I sat on the cold basement floor, staring at this letter. I looked at a picture of me and this indifferent boy that had been carefully folded inside. I felt a twinge of remembrance, the slightest pain of sadness and mild annoyance that my love letter hunt had devolved into such a bust. Just then my seven year old peeped over my shoulder.

"What is that?" she asked.

"Who is that?" she demanded before I had a chance to answer.

"Oh, that is a boy who use to be my boyfriend a long long time ago before I met your daddy." I told her a bit too wistfully. She leaned her head on my shoulder gently and then.....burst into laughter. Huge bursts of laughter that made her little belly shake. "His head", she puffed and squealed. "His head is the size of a water melon." With that she bounded out of the room still laughing to herself, pausing at the top of the stairs to call back down with dramatic hilarity "the siiizzze of a WATERMELON."

My daughter, my sweet darling daughter. In many ways my one true love. So funny. So loyal (to her most romantic and handsome father who has written me many many a love letter, and a few very bad poems.) I shoved all the sub-par romance from my past back into the box and kicked it for good measure to the back of the storage closet. I ran up the stairs to my room and grabbed a different box. I dumped it on the bed... a hundred or so love notes from Ella. Precious little scraps saved since she was tiny (which was five minutes ago as I have already established.) Pictures she drew for me, birthday cards, little notes she use to hide around the house. Scribbly squiggly barley readable characters written by the chubby clumsy fingers of a child just learning to write. I love you mommy. You are the best mommy. Thank you for being my mommy. My heart began to flutter and dance. My little true love. Turns out I didn't need to dig so deep. My very best love letters, the ones worth saving and sharing are definitely part of my present.