Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Writing a Letter (handwritten correspondence) (10/21/10)
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TITLE: What the Letter Said | Previous Challenge Entry
By LINDA GERMAIN
10/27/10 -
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Sure enough, soon I was flying first class from chilly Michigan to sunny Florida. The trouble began after I landed and was taken to the door of her modest mobile home in a small residential park. I had an important message for the lovely dark-haired lady and could hardly wait for her to read his amazing response to her inquiry.
Yes, he had told her, he remembered their fun times together when they were in school and how sorry he was they lost touch over the years. He sent his genuine condolences that she was widowed and even asked after her little girl.
Call me romantic, but there’s something irresistible about true love finding its way when distance and circumstance seem to work against couples who feel to the depths of their souls they were meant to be together. This was an obvious example--or was it?
A bewildering unexpected delay prevented me from completing my crucial mission. The object of his affection did not have a clue where I was, or that I was. You might say I fell between the cracks.
For many agonizing months she did not see me. She prayed and wept every night. It hurts to reach out with the best of intentions, and then be ignored. Her pride, and the culture of the times, dictated that she wait--and so she did; so did I. The place of my entrapment kept me from moving in any direction. There was no way for me to return to Michigan. I was stuck.
If there is a time and a season for everything under the sun, mine arrived on a balmy spring day while she was cleaning under the small wood porch attached to her trailer home. If she had not been a woman who paid attention to detail, she would have missed my ridiculously tardy and somewhat trashy appearance.
Her squeal of delight brought the elderly next-door neighbor outside to investigate. There was great rejoicing as the beloved dark-haired woman hugged the supportive white-haired grandmother, a witness to the whole romantic drama. All the news I brought was read and re-read until the sweet bride-to-be had it memorized.
Her answer to his plan for her to move back to the Wolverine state as soon as possible had to be telephoned. She did not want any more lost messages. In a week or so, she packed up her few things in the old Ford, leaving just enough room for her daughter, and of course, for me. We headed north. He was waiting with open arms. When he saw my disheveled appearance he suggested she might get rid of me, but she would have none of that. I was given my own special place of honor where she could always find me again.
On the day of the wedding she covered my aging, dog-eared looks with heavenly smelling flowers and off we went right down that aisle together. She seemed to float toward her darling groom whose eyes glistened with joy at the sight of the girl he had always loved. In a few months, she used his expensive stationery to send an announcement to her Florida neighbor. She wrote with a generous, sweeping hand, “We’re going to have a baby!”
As soon as that blessed event came to fruition, something infinitely sad transpired. I felt torrents of hot tears fall on me in my beribboned residence; my special place she had provided in an old pink candy box. They were not her tears. They were his.
Their precious child had survived. His beautiful wife, the light of his life, had not.
Is it really better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? Would things have turned out better if I had stayed hidden forever? If she had not felt compelled to rake under the porch that day and discover my unintentional hiding place, would she still be alive?
There are simply some things far beyond anyone’s ability to understand, especially if you’re a special delivery letter…written on classy stationery…with a very good pen.
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*Based on a true story (My grandmother was the Florida neighbor).
2 Corinthians 10:11 NKJV
…what we are in word by letters when we are absent, such we will also be in deed when we are present.
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