Dear Boy,

I love to adventure with you. I appreciate your willingness to go anywhere or do anything with me. Even run on a treadmill. Especially watch stars during a meteor shower, walk around new places, over new bridges and lockes, through cow fields, experience farm days and hot springs and ghost towns, try new foods, observe NYC from the 80-something story during a raging snowstorm, stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls, or just cuddle under the covers (clothing optional).  I love life and I love you and I love my life with you. Thanks for these eleven years. It's been a dream. 

L

Dear Boy,

Dear Boy,

Your own happiness brings me some of my deepest happiness.  Seeing you engaged in writing this past week has been so joyful for me, even beyond the fact that I love to read your stories and thoughts. You are extraordinary.  And so is your writing. And so is your husbanding. And though you disparage it quite often, your fathering is amazing and wonderful, too.

As far as the persona of your last life goes, I don't totally buy the idea of a persona.  I think it goes with my claim that you can never be 100% kidding. I do, of course, say that in jest, that thing about jokes, but then you have to wonder if I say that in 100% jest. 

I think a persona at least in the sense that you expressed (not a persona meant to manipulate or harm others, just an innocent one) is born of a real desire or ideal and should not, therefore be discredited. I think we always have a way of being and maybe even many all at once and I don't think that's bad. And if we change our way of being for different people, I think that's expected. And if we are exploring different ways of being all the while, then good. Maybe it's just our human way of becoming ourselves. We try on different styles and sizes until we find what fits.  Or maybe we are all bigger than we ever imagined and that's why it seems we change our minds with the wind.  Walt Whitman wrote, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."  I guess that is to say, don't fit yourself in any boxes, dear boy. 

If you wax poetic or artsy, I love you.   When your only dream is to tie up your boots and strap on your pack, I still love you.  When you want to stay home and till up the earth and tend to livestock, I love you.  There is goodness in you that runs much deeper than any of that and it shines through all of it.

Dear Lady,

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I've been doing a lot of writing over the course of the last week or so—and it's been awesome! I've felt much better about this structure of storytelling vs. the previous incarnation of my blog that involved rather errant accounts of my daily activities (kind of the equivalent of the types of emails I was complaining about yesterday). I was glad to hear that you preferred this new format to the old as well. I don't know . . . Maybe it shouldn't as much as it does, but your opinion kind of means the world to me. I could win all the writing awards there are (not to say that I would) and still be left unfulfilled if what I'd written wasn't rated "Awesome" by you. I think that was one of the reasons walking away from film was so easy.
Anyway, I wanted to mention writing again because I had touched upon it recently in one of my letters to you. In that letter I went on at length about my loss of love for writing. Now here I am writing at length. That's quite the flip-flop, yes?
No, actually. I've been thinking about this a lot and while I've been writing with great zeal over the past ten days it has not been a reawakening of the passion I spoke of in that previous letter. In that letter I was making reference to strictly creative writing. Fiction writing. Flowery prose and poetry. My former love of film and the fictional yarn. All of that is still absent, but I don't think I really miss it.
I had mused over it so heavily because it represented a time in my life when I knew exactly who I was as it concerned passion and career. There was a comfort in the assurance I felt then that I have been missing over the past several years. The more I thought about it, though—the more I tried to recapture it mentally—the more I realized I think it was all a yarn. I think I had loved the idea of who those things made me in the eyes of others rather than the actions themselves. Does that make sense?
Like my letters and emails and conversations would focus on the flowery things of life (once I moved on from my graphic fifth grade narrative phase), and my time with friends would focus on conversations concerning movies and their criticism, but none of these things crept into my alone time. If I were left to my own I wouldn't be thinking poetically. I wouldn't be constructing a movie in my mind. Do you know what I would be doing if left to my own devices? I'd be hiking. I'd be dreaming of travels. I'd be sitting in a tree fort dreaming of exploration. I'd be looking forward to the next scout outing.
It was really in late high school—in the midst of girls and popularity and girls—that I fully lost myself in poetry and film. Looking back it's almost like I created a persona for myself, and then fell back into that persona after my mission. Then you rescued me from it.
Don't get me wrong, I still think there is some staggering beauty in film. Sometimes it still bowls me over and I'm left disoriented and speechless. I love that. I love thinking about it. But there doesn't seem to be any part of me that truly wants to be a part of that anymore. I've tried to reawaken that love of making films and I just can't find it. I think it never really was. Maybe.
Maybe I'm just rambling again. Maybe this is just another phase. I feel good though. I still have no idea what I'll do to make a living. Maybe after all of this I will be a filmmaker. Who knows? What I do know is that I've been writing more and it feels great!

.a boy

Dear Lady,

It has been, admittedly, difficult to watch you go through this trial with your family (though admittedly less difficult than actually being you going through it). I love you so much that my heart scarcely knows what to do with it all and I hate that life is full of so many situations that I can't magically resolve for you. I suppose this is just always a part of being in love.
I am glad to hear that I have ever been of some comfort to you in this (as I typically feel rather like a helpless spectator with little impact on the event itself). I know that while you are ever patient and loving I can be ever strict and often callous, but I am working on it and it's good to know I'm making some progress.
Your mother is an amazing woman. I know my attitude and comments can often be otherwise, but I am ever indebted to her for the gift of you, and for whatever influence she may have had that allowed you to become the Lady I fell in love with. She is strong and able. She is intelligent and persistent. She is loving and faithful. She is my family.

.a boy