September 19, 2016 – Love Letters in the Sand – Far from it 

          Last night a young woman at work looked at her smart phone and smiled and said, “Ahh, that is sweet” and, she texted something back.  She has a new love and things are going well.

This modern technology and the modern generation have such a fast paced life.

          But, I was wondering: What happens to all those love texts with the shorthand spellings?  Can these young people capture them, print them out and tuck them in a lingerie drawer to savor 5 years, 15 years or 25 years from now?  Or, are those digital bits and bytes gone when the phone is lost or upgraded? Or, when there phone gets to maximum storage are they simply overwritten?

          In this information age, do their electronic love notes simply evaporate into cyberspace?  If so - how sad. What a shame.  What a waste of precious and valuable information, the foundation of a great love, of the beginning of a love that will last a lifetime possibly.  Part of me mourns for this generation.

          I am old school – I keep papers – the important papers.  I keep the snippets of paper that are the highlights of my life.  They celebrate success in work, school and love.  Those are the most important treasurers I own, my love letters. 

I have kept every love letter and endearing hand written note my husband has given me over the years since we were dating.  Most are framed in inexpensive little gold frames dispersed throughout our house.  Some are propped up on the book cases; others hang in the hall or the master bedroom, usually not seen by others.  Only a few intimate friends have had the opportunity to read some of them.

They are tinged with age, you can see where they were once scotch taped to something, or are torn on the edges, or creased from being folded away for years.  But all those loves notes in inexpensive gold frames are priceless to me.

A dear friend was in the depths of my master bedroom helping me with some sort of “fashion accessory” situation and she asked, “What are those?”

“My love letters.”

“Love letters?” she asked with great curiosity.

“Yeah, I’ve got all the little love notes from even when we were dating . . .”

She could not resist and started to read them. She struggled to read my husband’s handwriting.  I stepped closer and read them aloud as I have most of them almost memorized. 

She sadly said, “My husband has never written me a love letter.” 

Part of me ached for her loss and then part of me questioned if that was true.  I simply could not imagine not a single message had been left stuck on the refrigerator or back door as a reminder with an “I love you” scrawled at the end. 

That is what most of mine are; those things we have to jot down as we are heading out to work and our mate needs the information when arriving home.

Lately my favorite place to post little love notes these days is dead center on the screen of the TV.

Or, maybe, others just toss out the notes not realizing the sweet sentiment involved.  I must be too much of a romantic as I kept the following note:

Bridgett

Would you please take my tapes back after 12 noon.  I found keys under park bench.

I love you my little Chick-A-Dee.

R____

          We were both out in the garden one day and he lost his keys out his back pocket sitting on the garden bench.  I had to leave before him for some early morning appointment and I left him looking for his keys.  He finally had to take the spare set and this note was stuck on the back door when I arrived home.  The diagonal tape has turned darker than the rest and it shows signs that it was pulled out of a tiny ring notebook. The torn ring circles running down the jagged left edge.

          Of course the most amusing in my collection of these loving tidbits of our years together is the envelope to a birthday card I received a dozen or so years ago. To celebrate my birthday one fall, I and a close friend went to a play put on by the Rutherford Arts Counsel.  When I go to these events I “dress”.  I have a private love affair with huge scarfs.  [An aside, soon we will talk about French women and the scarf.]  As I breezed out of the house that evening on a cloud of perfume with a large scarf elegantly draped about my shoulders my husband called, “Have a good time,  . . . that scarf . . . . You look like a flagship.”  I shared the comment with my girlfriend and we had a chuckle about it.

          A few days later the envelope to my birthday card had a sketch of an ocean liner with writing along the hull: “HMS St. John”. In an arch over the top, like an advertisement, he had block lettered “To the flagship of our family.”

          I certainly don’t recall the gift he gave me, but the envelope is framed and resides on my bookcase.  It always makes me smile when I see it.

          And, of course the highlight of my collection is the note he wrote when he was alone at the hospital the night before his open heart surgery. 

It starts:

“01/22/12” . . . .

it ends,

. . . . .  “Love you forever”.

          Yes, I think this new younger generation is going to miss out on some of the most romantic simple pleasures of life.  Those hand written notes on slips of wayward pieces of paper that drift into your life which are kept and read over and over again.