A Vintage Love Letter

While going through some vintage magazines, I found an old typed out letter a friend of mine had written to her husband. I'm not sure exactly when it was written but the paper is aged and frail. It's truly endearing so I thought I'd post it.

Dear Dick,

Everything as been said about love, hasn't it? That's why it's so hard to say anything that sounds real when you feel strongly about somebody, the way I feel about you.

When we stayed at Bab's in San Francisco I realized in strange surroundings that you were all important to me. The fact that I was apart from all my daily trivial interests, showed me with new perspective that you were my real happiness. Away from my material belongings, my superficial acquaintances, my good friends, I realized that in a strange place I was lost without you, comfortable and even excited with you.

I tried to tell you in Santa Barbara once, what you meant to me. I didn't do very well but I think I gave you a glimpse of what I mean. Somehow it's easier away from home. A new backdrop is a little shot in the arm. So is a new situation. Like when we were first married and I got the apartment, or when one of us is on a new and interesting job. When routine or stagnation sets in -- we're open for boredom. And when we're bored with things, it's awfully habit forming. The next step is getting bored with each other.

I saw another new angle for the first time when you were sick. I stopped to consider for the first time how I would feel if anything happened to you. It scared hell out of me. I wouldn't just be out a provider like a lot of women. Or just a bed partner or somebody to cook for. Or more pertinently, not just somebody who is interested in almost everything worthwhile, and laughs at my peculiar humor, and thinks I look cute in a flannel nightgown with a bandana tied around my head, and never strikes back when I'm in a contemptible mood. No, more than that. Forever irreplaceable things. Inarticulate things. You can't describe the feeling of a whole love. It's too quicksilver to get down on paper.

I'm afraid that sometimes when we start to believe that our marriage is bringing us closer together by giving us mutual goals and past experiences to remember, we forget that when we first met, or almost immediately after we had a sense of closeness that didn't have anything to do with the ordinary reasons. We were relaxed with each other even in the midst of first sexual attraction and getting to know each others ideas. We had to get acquainted with each others ideas and each others bodies, but there was something else far more impressive than both, that we saw in each other immediately. I still don't know what to call it. It was as if, when I was a little child I dreamed a dream one night about a boy who felt exactly like me and dreamed the same dreams.

He was lonesome too and like me didn't think he would ever meet somebody who could see inside of him. But he had a dream the same night I did, and when I saw him he saw me and we were both full of wonder at the rightness of the other. Then I woke up and never remembered the dream again. Neither did he. And when we met each other years later we still didn't remember the dream. But we felt it's presence strongly because it was awake again.

I love you.