My Midwinter Moments are over for the year, the last one posted on January 22. It's time for Spring Moments. Of course, the first isn't a moment at all; it's a way of life. Today, the day I am writing, is two weeks after Easter. Like many, we had a our typical Resurrection Sunday: church and Easter Breakfast. We sat with friends in the Fellowship Hall and gorged on eggs, pancakes, sausage and fruit. Very Lutheran.
This year we had no family for brunch or supper. We were alone together, our favorite way to be. We have committed to de-cluttering this spring. We are beginning with old love letters, the handwritten kind, written when we were very young and before email or cell phones. It is the first time we have ever re-read these longing, romantic missives sent between college students living states apart.
For three years we each wrote almost a letter a day. Having met in junior high and dated in high school, in college we were growing into adults together, sharing our academic pursuits (both English majors) and amazing feelings of overwhelming love. Not puppy love, or first love, but what was to become lasting love; love that would weather all storms, even great losses. But of course, when we wrote these letters, we knew nothing of adversity. We knew not that we were setting a strong foundation that would build trust of one another we couldn't, and didn't want to, break.
I am going through the boxes and reading the yellowing letters aloud to my husband, bits and pieces, as he gives intermittent attention to a project on his computer. We run across adventures we barely remember. Each letter is full of feeling.
"1 a.m. Monday morning. Back in the dormitory again! It seems I just left. You were in my thoughts all the way from St. Louis to Fort Wayne, as I dreamed many beautiful stories about us which will all come true. . . . You are all the brightness in my life; you are my life. Without you, there would be nothing. I love you with all my being, with all the strength that I have, and never, as long as I live, will I cease loving you."
I think we were 19 and 20 when this was written. We have grandchildren those ages now. Can we look to the future from a letter like that? Do such feelings make an unbreakable bond for a marriage? Or might someone feel that way at 20 or 30 and squander it all for a secret relationship at 40? Or even 70?
I tend to think that the early longing we endured built, in me at least, expectation and assurance of lasting fidelity. I believed that early letter and responded in kind. The slightest deviation from that kind of love, for me, would not stand. My husband, I hope, the same.
I have stacks of letter yet to go through. Then we will save some and discard most. I want to save the one I quoted. How sweet is that, from a 20-year-old to the girl he loved? I am lucky to be that girl, that woman. We are both lucky. Reading these for the first time in decades is a Spring Moment for us.
With happiness, Nina Naomi
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