‘I think you are the sweetest, kindest, dearest, loveliest, most thoughtful, best looking and most loveable girl in the whole world. I love you with all the strength that is in me.’
-Dean P. Stiles to Marion E. Davison, April 1945
‘What I want to convey in this note is that my thoughts have been filled with you constantly since Sunday night and that the days have seemed dreadfully long, I’ve missed you so. Already tonight I miss you voice. Somehow the day doesn’t seem complete. I wonder where you are and what you are doing. Are you thinking of me? I love to spend my waking hours each day running over and over again the things we have done together, the things you have said to me and to recall every wonderful moment you have been in my arms. I do believe I remember every little detail. Yes, I even remember that the big toe on each of your feet is relatively shorter than the one next to it.’
-Dean P. Stiles to Marion E. Davison July 1944
‘Can you keep a secret? You can? Well, I love you, sweetheart, so much in fact that these words form with my every breath. May my love for you keep you warm and close to me. I’ll be with you soon.’
-Dean P. Stiles to Marion Davison July 1944
All these love letters and twenty something years worth of birthday, anniversary, Easter and Mothers Day cards, stored away in boxes all over the house. Love. It can be so ephemeral! It can build you up and break you down in a day. I found a card sent from my Grandfather Dean to my Nana after twenty something years of marriage that read on the front- “Can we get together on this?”. When you open it up there is a picture of a bed and it’s signed, your loving and hopeful hubby. He sent it from the post office in their town to the house they shared. Weird. And sad. And damn if history doesn’t repeat itself!! My husband hasn’t had a regular sex life in years. Poor guy… Anyway, the infamous story is that when my Grandfather left my Nana, he threw a book at her that he had bought full of new sexual positions he hoped they could try. My Nana was crippled with arthritis and probably depression and my Grandfather was sexually frustrated and unhappy with the way his life had turned out. Love in all its new beginnings is so Utopian but loves’ decline is anything but idyllic.
My husband told me last night that he’s been spending time with a woman he met. Not official dates, just getting together and talking. I didn’t feel a shock or jolt of pain. I felt calm and actually happy for him. Huh. I mean that says a lot right? But I also have some excitement going on here so maybe that’s why I’m so OK with it?
This guy that I fell head over heels in love with during a summer spent in Oregon eleven years ago, recently opened a FB account just to find me. I mean this guy……… I haven’t ever really gotten over the sense that I missed out on something big with him. Total unrequited love. He, (I’ll call him J), had a girlfriend when I met him but the draw we felt towards one another was so strong that he told his girlfriend he needed to spend time with me to figure out what was going on. She gave him her blessing and I’ll always admire her for that very strong and difficult decision. We only spent time alone on two occasions and kissed with sweet longing and immense restraint. We jumped into a freezing lake and collapsed laughing and shivering on our towels. We lay on our bellies, shoulders touching and talked for hours. On the drive home that day he reached silently across the car and ran his fingers down the entire length of my arm to my fingertips. I can still remember how my arm tingled and practically burned from his touch. Then she recanted and made him choose. He chose her and rightfully so. I was devastated and spent the last three weeks crying myself to sleep and slept with some dude who was just that- some dude. At the end of my last day of work at the resort lodge, I called the bellhop service for a ride to the golf course where the car I shared with friends was parked. Who should show up to get me but J. I walked to the back of the shuttle van, the only passenger in there and sat with arms crossed in the very back. He drove me in silence for most of the way and suddenly pulled off to the side of the road practically skidding to a halt. I can’t remember if he turned to face me or if he spoke to my reflection in the rear-view mirror but he told me that he needed for me to know, with out a doubt, before I left, that the decision had been very difficult for him and that he cared for me very much. That he thought about me every day even though he couldn’t call. He delivered me to the golf course, I hugged him goodbye, flew back to Boston the next day and that was eleven years ago.
He ended up marrying her. She asked for a divorce a few years ago. Now he writes me out of the blue and our emails have that same veiled excitement that our conversations did all those years ago. The excitement that comes from wanting and finding yourself able to discuss anything and everything with a matched wit, imagination and intelligence. Then he tells me in his last email that he has a girlfriend out there that he got together with shortly after his divorce, who followed him from New Orleans to northern California. He intimates his unease at not feeling sure that she is the one he wants to marry and have children with. She wants this with him and he wonders if he is being unrealistic and selfish in holding out for that ‘mind bending’ love as he calls it. Oh man… My heart fell about three stories when I read this. He has a girlfriend. Pffffft. But then this is the shit I’ve been thinking about and writing about every day for years now, so you can only imagine the lengthy email I sent out in response.
I don’t want to be let down again. Nor do I want to be used like a sandbag on his scale so he can determine how much he loves this woman. But I also don’t want to let him slip away again if this is life yelling in my face. Maybe as we communicate more I’ll realize he’s a total dork, or he’s way into God, or he’s too straight laced for me. Or maybe I’ll just tell him to get some balls, take the reigns and come for a visit to New England.
But just as ephemeral as love can be, it can also suddenly sprout the most tenacious roots that declare permanence. It remains to be seen what will happen between J and his lover or what he wants from me. Just one more thing for me to add to the list of uncertainties that make up my present and future. This afternoon I will continue to immerse myself in the lives of my grandparents, whose future has already become their past, the last chapters already written. THERE is something I can hang my hat on-a future that I know awaits me with absolute certainty: a final chapter. Here’s to a damn good read until then!
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