Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Love letters


When I was young and peachy, men wrote poetry for me - all of it bad. A little older and earnest suitors would quote Dante and Marvell, at length and in letter-form. I have had my share of those who missed me and wrote to tell me of their sighs. Indeed, I have done my own share of letter-sighing. But there came a time, I put away the ribboned, heart-felt bundles of my youth and wed a letter writer. Married, there is little need to write your passion down. Instead you write "Darling, please remember to buy milk". Who else then is there to write to me of love?
This afternoon, when I got home, fatigued and city-worn, a torn cream corner of my heaviest paper was propped against a wild dog and a soft furred cheetah which both sat proud on a plastic stool. "Welchm homw mummey," the letters tumbled across the page, hasty to escape. Later, my eldest, urgent boy hurtling in from school, threw himself at me. "Did you like my note?" he demanded. "They were my spellings. I might," he pulled away slightly, "have got one of them wrong." "No," I shook my head and hugged him mother-tight. "It was entirely perfect."

5 comments:

007and a half said...

Expect it to get worse as the children grow older:

Last year, on my birthday, I received loving cards -filled with close-written lines of cramped expressions of undiluted, blinkered, outpouring of love and affection - from my girls. They also spent all their pocket money on a strangely hideous, yet heart warmingly lovely, Happy Birthday banner, streamers and balloons when they discovered I was not otherwise having a birthday tea party.

My H couldn't see the point in wasting £2.50 on a piece of card when he knew that I would take it as read that he would wish me a Happy Birthday. An apparently logical position commensurate with marriage.

The next phase will be teenagerhood and the remaining source of spelled out, in writing, fully expressed, adoration will dry up.

Maybe this shouldn't be important.

In any case, one is left with the hope of the odd wistful e-mail from an old admirer.

Whispering Walls said...

I'm sure many of your male readers would fill the gap.

kinglear said...

ANYONE expressing love for you is wonderful - as 007.5 ponts out, it dries up as time goes on - they want nothing to do with you -until they get to about 20, when its's "OOh are you going on holiday? Well, I'll come too ( hidden meaning, as long as you pay for it) But is is lovely that they still need you.

Ellee Seymour said...

Take comfort from the thought that when your son is older, he will write poetry for you, just as mine does, though they are usually school assignments which he brings home proudly and recites to me. He did so this afternoon, it was a wonderful poem about being caught in a hurricane. And I have two of his poems stuck on the wall in my office which have both been published in national school poetry publications. These moments make motherhood moments to treasure.

toutatis said...

Dante and Marvell seem like verbous putzes to me.

Still, you seem to be romantic enough. Ever try William Butler Yeats? - I mean his "wine comes in at the mouth" thing.