A love story

My sisters and I have spent some time over the past few days reading love letters that my parents wrote to each other throughout the years of their marriage. Most of these letter were written when my dad was away for Basic Training as an Army Reservist in the early 70s. It's uncanny, because these are different people (my mom and dad), and a different time (the 70s), but the same situations that I'm living or have lived. In one letter my young mom is sorry for being unhappy on a phone call with my dad, after he had to leave things a mess to get to basic training. How many times have I apologized been in that situation, making a big fuss with Bill over something, but mostly because I missed him? In one letter, my dad is pining away for his young wife with the intensity of young love that I remember so well as a 23 or 24 year old, when a love like that was the whole world, or all I wanted from it.

It just all makes me wonder...how much of who you are is determined already by your own biology? Here are my knees, showing up in the 1940s under my grandmother's dress. Here's my hair color, and of course, though you can't see it, here's my mutation, too. Here's my mood swings, showing up in letters before I was even born. Here's the same way I love, and argue, and the things that I worry about. Though I know so much of this is probably universal...I just recognize it so much in my Dad's prose, or my Mom's.

It's been enlightening, reading their letters, and hearing them talk once again. I see my Dad's handwriting being formed, hear his signature phrases and my Mom's as well. It's kind of nice, but I'm also a little afraid to really pour myself into those boxes and those letters. It makes me miss them and makes me feel sorry for what they lost. How sad to love so hard and then to lose your young wife! And then also, how sad to miss the opportunity to spend time with these guys, the 2nd generation of your love:

I know they were lucky to have found that love at all, and to have been that happy. I know they are still with us in a way. I also know that at least one of these grandchildren would rather have those grandparents on this earth with her - and I have a feeling that the other 5 will feel that way someday, too.