Love Letters: A Giveaway

Book CoverOnce upon a time, there was a book. Well, sort of. There was a book in a movie. Sex & The City was the movie in question and the book that wasn’t a book was used as a prop by Carrie, when she read aloud from Love Letters of Great Men.

Seems moviegoers went hunting for the book in bookstores, but there was no such thing. Not because great men didn’t write love letters, but because the book wasn’t real. But it is now. From Napoleon to Darwin to Beethoven, the passionate missives of some fascinating historical figures are now available for your musing and perusing. My favorite love letter, though, “I love you… I love you like guitars,” from John Lennon to his then-wife Cynthia, isn’t in there. But this letter from the collection is pretty damn fine:

Livy Darling,

Six years have gone by since I made my first great success in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence made preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world… Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed. So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!

Always Yours

S.L.C.”

S.L.C. – aka Mark Twain, to his wife, Olivia Langdon, on her thirtieth birthday

And hello, dear readers, I have five copies to give away! Would you like one? Sure you would – I think this book is adorable. Even if Carrie hadn’t used it in a film, I’d be curious about it. So, if you’d like a collection of manly heartfelt love letters of your own, leave a comment with your favorite love letter or romantic moment from your life, and I’ll select five winners to receive a copy. Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for the books. And to Mark Twain for totally warming the cockles of my heart. Or vice versa.

 

Wait, you want my love letter entry? Heh.

Back in college, before Hubby and I were officially an item, I met up with him at a New Year’s party during winter break of our freshman year. Hubby and I met in high school, and most of our mutual friends were at this party. I have no clear memory of writing a letter to him after that night, but at some point, I wrote a long, rambly, probably incoherent letter about how much I liked him and was attracted to him, and then, I mailed it. Seriously, this is not like me. I have no idea when I mailed it. But I did.

Surprise, surprise, Hubby wrote back. I received a printed out letter from him in Chicago (not handwritten; I’d never have been able to read it) when I returned back to school in South Carolina the following week. And while I don’t remember the specifics of the first paragraph, he admitted he really liked me too, he had always been attracted to me, but since we were 1000 miles apart, there wasn’t anything we could do about it anyway. Then came the memorable, romantic part, when he wrote:

“In other news, I’m going to change fonts. It’s really cold here. Today it was -40F with the wind chill. I almost froze my dick off.”

Ahh. Romance with Hubby. Nothing like it under the sun, or inside the wind chill.

 

Comments are Closed

  1. Val says:

    Mine is more a quote than a love letter but it is my absolute favorite line and one I think is so romantic, even though its from Winnie the Pooh:

    If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.

    So simple, so heartfelt. If my man is half as poetic I’ll be a happy gal.

  2. MaryKate says:

    I haven’t had any super romantic moments in my life. But I’ll never forget one from my parents.

    My dad was a news correspondent so was on travel a lot when I was growing up. But I remember one night when I was in high school. My mom had pneumonia and had moved to our guest room because she was coughing at night and didn’t want to wake my dad, who so often didn’t get the chance to sleep in his own bed. That particular night, I came home early from a date, and could hear my dad speaking quietly upstairs in the guest room. I walked up the first two stairs and realized that my dad was reading “Sonnets from the Portuguese” to my mom by candlelight. I crept back down the stairs and stepped outside to our front porch and sat on the stoop until my curfew so as not to disturb them. It was one of the sweetest moments I’ve ever witnessed. My parents celebrated 50 years of marriage last year.

  3. Jessica says:

    In this day and age of computers, instant messaging and text messages, I must lament that I have never gotten a love letter. Love texts aplenty, but I think that somewhere something is lost in that.  However, the most romantic thing to happen to me in my 22 years on this planet, is watching my grandma talk about my grandpa. The love that she still has for him, even though he’s been dead for over 18 years, the love that shows in her eyes is as strong as it was in their wedding pictures.

  4. Estelle Chauvelin says:

    Target, my boyfriend for about the last four and a half years, isn’t exactly the letter writing type.  In fact we sort of went from being good friends to being a couple without really talking about it until after the fact.  (Along the line of “So, how did this happen?” “I don’t really know.  I’m glad it did.”)  For that matter, the reason why I said “about the last four and a half years” is that we can’t agree on what date to call our anniversary.  I think it’s about three months after he does because he wants to call an evening when we were only alone because the rest of our friends cancelled our first date.

    A week or so after we had gotten straight what the heck was going on, I was rapidly approaching the due date of a huge paper for a bioethics class.  I told Target that I was going to keep all the plans that I already had made, but I wasn’t going to make any more until after I’d finished my paper.  He agreed that I should do that, and said that if I worked hard on my paper until that Friday (a regular gaming night we had with friends), then he’d meet me early a few blocks away at the community theater where we both did stuff with a surprise to help me relax.

    So I arrived there a little earlier than he had asked so that I could grab some coffee at my favorite shop across the street, and when I walked back he was waiting.  He said “I have a five step plan to help you relax from working on your paper.  Step one was showing up.  Here’s step two,” and he handed me a bouquet of flowers.  After giving me a minute to admire them, he told me that for step three he was picking me up so I was going to need to put down the flowers and the coffee.  So once I was off the ground he said, “Step four is optional: kiss the crazy guy who came up with the plan.”

    So, that’s the story of our first kiss.  He then told me that steps three and four could be repeated as necessary.  Step five was proceeding to our regularly scheduled WWI game and shooting down airplanes.

  5. At the age of fourteen, the boy I liked—who had already asked me out once, and I said no!—wrote me a note and passed it to me in the hallway (or via someone else… I can’t remember).

    My last name is Dickson, and the note had my full name, Kate Dickson, with the DICK underlined many times. Boy humor.

    “Have I ever told you how attracted to you I am? It’s true.”

    Well, he got my fourteen-year-old self like a hook, line, and sinker on dry land.

    Later, after seven or so years of on-again, off-again, I would get cards filled with romantic, funny prose (he’s a talented, clever writer). But even now that our relationship is over (the romantic part, anyway), I like this best.

    “Have I ever told you how attracted to you I am? It’s true.”

  6. Julianna says:

    Every month or two, my husband looks into my eyes and tells me that making me happy is his life’s goal.  And he always does it – in the grand romantic ways, and by cleaning up the cat puke.  That is a good man.

  7. Oh, and I like Joanne’s and Loralie’s the best! 🙂

  8. Crys says:

    My girlfriend and I haven’t been together for very long, but we’ve been best friends for a very long time.  Neither one of us is any good at romance, but being together makes us want to be.  Neither one of us is any good at talking about our feelings, but again, we’re really trying.  Neither one of us has a good track record when it comes to relationships.

    The most romantic thing that anyone has ever done for me is that she told me I am her Person, and she told our friends is that I am her Person, which still makes me choked up because it’s the simple truth, and she couldn’t think of any more accurate way to put it.  Because we are so damn certain of each other.

    I think maybe the most romantic thing I’ve ever done is on our one month anniversary, I wrote her a poem about how she makes me want to write poetry, even though I’m no good at it.  About how she makes me want to make a fool of myself even though normally I avoid that at all costs.  Because it’s true, and she does, and I want the whole world to know how much I love her.

  9. Laura says:

    Okay, dang. I just got divorced, so I’m not in a mood for romance. But I could use something to warm the cockles of my heart, so here goes. Before we were married, I was feeling tired one Friday night, so the ex covered me up with a blanket on the couch while he went to go get a pizza for us to have for dinner. That made me feel nice and safe and warm and snuggly.

  10. Tabithaz says:

    I was sixteen, and went on my very first date with my very first boyfriend.  We danced at a party.  The next day, he sent me an emila that said:

    “Hey, I just wanted to tell you I had a really great time last night . . . and I don’t know how to say this, but I never felt more whole than when you were in my arms last night.”

    Silly teenager that I was, I was completely useless for the rest of the day, and my math teacher had to repeat a question twice before I realized she was talking to me.

  11. Yvonne says:

    I don’t have time to read this whole comment section right now but I can’t wait!

    Ron and I became friends nearly 20 years ago and have been an item for more than 16. We got married only a month ago because of issues all my own. He waited all that time.

    The most romantic thing was something he once said to me.
    “You are the smartest person I have ever known.”

    God I love him. I’m glad I woke up before it was too late.

  12. Jill Shalvis says:

    I met my husband when he was an EMT on the mean streets of LA and I was an accounting clerk in the dispatch office.  We were 21 years old.  It’s been twenty years and some of the romantic part of the romance has slipped here and there but he does manage to always, and I mean always, come through for me.  In the last snow storm, with 3 feet of fresh powder, I mistakenly thought I could drive my daughter’s friend home.  Husband said no.  I said yes.  I of course got stuck only half a mile from the house.  After 20 minutes of digging out the tires, I was nowhere close to getting free and far too proud to call home.  Are you kidding? Hell, no.  He told me I couldn’t do it.  So I kept digging.  Ate all the chocolate in the car and dug some more.  A truck pulls up.  It’s the husband with chains to pull me out and a mug of hot chocolate.  I’ve never been so happy to see that smart ass in all our 20 years.  And best yet, he didn’t even say I told you so.  Of course he didn’t have to, it was all over his face.

  13. Leslie H says:

    Here you go, the RIGHT answer to an unanswerable question.

    My hair had reached the impossible middle length and I was reviewing with my friend Jack- would it look better longer or shorter?

    Jack: It doesn’t matter.
    Me: Of course it matters, You must have a preference.
    Jack: It doesn’t matter.
    Me: (Heavy sigh)
    Jack: Look, if you wear it long; you fix it up and you look beautiful. If you wear it short; you fix it up and you look beautiful. It doesn’t matter.

    We have been best buds for 25 years.

  14. Heather says:

    I have boxes of love letters (and poems, written in calligraphy, and envelopes full of rose petals and all those grand romantic gestures) from my husband and I’s courtship. But you know, we were young and in lust/infatuation and while they are lovely and sweet, I don’t think that’s what keeps you going in the long run.

    Fast forward 15 years, a wedding, a lot of troubled times, and a baby on the way. We’re cleaning the garage (the romance!) and my husband runs across a random piece of paper. He writes this note on it and sticks it on the wall while I’m dragging yet another bag to the trash:

    Dear Monkey,

    I love you. Do you love me?

    __ Yes
    __ No

    Of course I checked “Yes”! It’s those little things – goofy notes and emails and random kisses that make it all worthwhile and make you remember why you want to spend your lifetime with someone.

  15. Suze says:

    …realized that my dad was reading “Sonnets from the Portuguese” to my mom by candlelight

    Wow, MaryKate, that right there made me cry.  Good thing my cubicle’s in a corner.

    My first (and thus far only) proposal came at age 4.  “When we grow up, marry me, ‘cause we can live in Calgary.  There’s a zoo there!”

  16. Lauren says:

    This is part of a letter Gerald,  my great grandfather,  sent to Mary, my great grandmother.  He was a working class dentist (yes, my snooty great-great grandmother actually looked down on any man with a profession) and she was the daughter of the aforementioned rich, snooty old woman.  They were separated during her first pregnancy because Mary was anemic, and her mother refused to let her leave Nashville for the wilds of Southern Florida, claiming Nashville’s hospitals were much better.

    The letter is simply dated “Tuesday Night”, but the post date looks to be around February 21, 1926, which is about six months before the birth of their first child.  It’s possible he didn’t know about the pregnancy yet.  Gerald had a very wry sense of humor, one of the reasons Mary fell in love with him.  He also had a bit of a temper. 

    Naturally, I inherited both.

    “Darling Mary,

    Alright you little devil.  You don’t want to come home to your papa at all do you?  Well, when I do get you home I’m fair gonna break your neck and spank your back side of your dress till I get tired.  I’m so mad that I don’t think I’ll ever speak to you again, and I know I won’t ever let you go home again, and I’m not going to warm your feet in cold weather, and I’m not going to carry out the trash, and I’m not going to carry the hot water to the bath tub for you, and I’m not going to let you see the funny papers and I’m going to scatter cigarette ashes all over the house and start chewing tobacco.

    You said you would see me in four weeks.  You are fair gonna see me before then.  I would hate to drive up there in all this cold weather, but I can’t stand but very little more of this, and if you won’t come home I am going after you and I don’t mean maybe.

    I’m mad as the devil and going to the show to drown my sorrow.  The picture [enclosed] is of the Johnstown Flood.

    Nighty night, and lots of love,”

    This is but one of many letters he sent her.  Some beg for return letters from her, most just pine for her: “I didn’t think it possible to miss anybody so much until the train was out of sight when you left.”  Some try to find reasons to justify her not being there: “Believe me, if you had been here your little old feet would have frozen off at night, because they most freeze sometimes when it is not cold a bit.”  There is very little doubt that he loved her very, very much.

    She eventually did move down to Florida with him, and they had three glorious years together before she died giving birth to their second son, Thomas.

    That year, the stock market crashed, and the two boys went to live with their snooty, not very-rich-anymore grandmother.  This wasn’t Gerald’s choice, but he was so brokenhearted, he didn’t fight too hard.  Gerald never remarried and died in Florida about five years after Mary.  They were buried together in Nashville.

    And some of my friends wonder why I don’t fall in love more casually…

  17. Katie Ann says:

    I’m always spouting ridiculous nicknames for DH (“my honey bunches of oats,” etc.) and over IM I told him:

    Me: I love you my little bunny bear
    Him: I love you too
    Him: My strawberry cheesecake

    I have to treasure the small, weird moments where he gets at all sweet (he happens to love strawberry cheesecake) and even remotely romantic.

  18. Marcia in OK says:

    I need another box of tissue.  These comments have me crying all over the tax reports on my desk. 

    A stand out memory for me – I was a skinny seventeen year old from the Not Prom Queen Material club.  It was a crisp fall evening after a football game.  It was time to go home, and my friend walked me to my car, kissed me on the cheek and closed me safely into my car.  I rolled the window down to say goodnight, and he said, “Good night, keep safe, I love you.”  I drove all the way home with the window down.  I was in such a daze.

    It was the first time anyone not related to me had said “I love you”.  I was stunned.  And still 30 years later, every kiss I get on the cheek makes me think of that first one.

  19. amanda says:

    I personally haven’t had any great romantic moments, but the Sullivan Ballou letter always makes me weep:

    July 14,1861
    Camp Clark, Washington DC

    Dear Sarah:

    The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days – perhaps tomorrow. And lest I should not be able to write you again I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I am no more.

    I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing – perfectly willing – to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.

    Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but omnipotence can break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly with all those chains to the battlefield. The memory of all the blissful moments I have enjoyed with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God and you, that I have enjoyed them for so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes and future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and see our boys grown up to honorable manhood around us.

    If I do not return, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I loved you, nor that when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name…

    Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless, how foolish I have sometimes been!…

    But, 0 Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they love, I shall always be with you, in the brightest day and in the darkest night… always, always. And when the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath, or the cool air your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

    Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for me, for we shall meet again…

    Sullivan Ballou was killed the next week at the 1st Battle of Bull Run (Manassas).

  20. Cat Marsters says:

    My life has been short on love letters, too.  I did once get a poem, but it was as weird as the guy who sent it.

    In a Valentine’s card once, I was sent: “To the cutest, smartest, funniest girl I know.  Who is also the owner of the world’s longest scarf.”  I’d worn the scarf on our last date.  It wouldn’t mean much to anyone else, but it was sweet to me that he remembered it.

    For love letters, however, my favourite is still the letter Benedick totally fails to write to Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing:

    “The God of Love
    That sits above
    And knows me, and knows me
    How pitiful I deserve—

    I mean in singing; but in loving, Leander the good swimmer, Troilus the first employer of pandars, and a whole book of quondum carpet-mongers whose names run smoothly in the even road of blank verse, why they were never so truly turned over and over as my poor self in love.  Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme.  I have tried.  I can find out no rhyme to ‘lady’ but ‘baby’, an innocent rhyme; for ‘scorn’ ‘horn’, a hard rhyme; for ‘school’ ‘fool’, a babbling rhyme.  Very ominous endings.  No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.”

    I just love how his lack of poetical prowess has him wallowing in the same depths of tragedy as a man who drowned for love.  Especially as he’s so quick-witted in speech, telling Beatrice a few lines later, “I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes.”  Adorable.

  21. Jen says:

    OK, this only makes sense if you’ve seen Mystery, Alaska. In it, Russell Crowe’s character is apologizing to his wife by way of a letter, of sorts. Its a Dear Abby column with all but a few words blacked out. They’re a jumbled mish-mash, but reflect what he sees in her, what he loves her for. It iss one of my fave movie romance moments. I mentioned that I really appreciated that type of gesture.

    Well, a few days/weeks later a guy friend who’d watched the movie with a group of us gave me an envelope. Inside, was a Dear Abby column, blacked out but for the words he wanted me to read.

    Now, I wish I had snapped that guy up, because guys who pay attention to your notions of romance are rare. But more the fool me, I didn’t. I still have the letter though, as a reminder that there are those kind of men out there who listen and try to give you your heart’s desire.

  22. Conrad says:

    When I was working in a children’s hospital as a Respiratory Therapist last year, I had just finished a brutal 12 hours shift in ICU.  My girlfriend as I had plans to cook a nice, relaxing meal but I ended up getting called back into work to go on a Medevac.  I flew out with the medical flight team and we brought back a newborn with severe respiratory distress.  My 12 hour shift turned into nearly 20 hours.  After everything was straightened away (the little baby was fine, by the way) I dragged myself back home.  When I got in the door, I found a huge pile of my homemade brownies on the kitchen table with a note.  It said “To the saviour of babies, who also happens to be my hero: I love you”

    That was when I decided I was going to marry her 🙂

  23. Rebecca Hb. says:

    When I was a young teenager, I and a guy online were very, very serious about each other. Head over heels teenage love.

    One day, I found a letter from him in the mailbox. I don’t remember what it said anymore, but it charmed me so much that I immediately wrote back. Then he wrote back, and I wrote back. We exchanged handwritten letters for half a year until the stirred excitement of mutual teenage passion wore off.

    I saved all of his letters. There was just something so amazing about getting handwritten letters from a guy I only knew online.

  24. Cori says:

    Ahhh, my (not so) romantic husband. His proposal to me was a thing of beauty.

    We were at a David Grey concert on a warm July night and he looked deep into my eyes and said,  “Well, how do you feel about November 22?”.  “Why?” I asked. “Because that’s the day we’re getting married.” How could I refuse?

    We just had our 5-year anniversary and his card to me was so completely him.  It reads “I needed ya. I got ya. I’m keeping ya. Love ya.”

    A man of few words, and I love every one of them.

  25. tornadogrrrl says:

    I was an actress in community theatre and a weekend of performances coincided with a conference that I would have liked to attend.  My boyfriend went off to the conference without me (he did go see the show on a different weekend) but before he left he handed me a small mountain of notes.  Each one was written on lined notebook paper and folded up in a different way.  He instructed me to open each one at the time written on the outside (Friday, 7:34pm or right before you eat lunch Saturday afternoon). 
    Some of the notes were goofy, some sweet, some deeply passionate, and there were enough of them that I got to open several every day.  The fabulousness of each note, and the anticipation for the next carried me through the entire weekend with barely a twinge of disappointment that I wasn’t at the conference with him.

  26. BethC says:

    Nothing from my own, but we’re in the process of clearing out the home of my husband’s late parents (both passed away in September, 19 days apart).  My father-in-law was an inveterate letter-writer, first to his mother in World War II, then later to my mother-in-law when he was courting her in the early 1960’s.  We found a box last time that included an exchange of letters & postcards, where he apologized first for not having been down to see her (35 miles), because Boeing had him working second shift, and he didn’t want to interfere with her getting to work at the crayon factory.  She sent him several post cards from a family trip to Yellowstone, telling him about having a bear try to get into the tent she was sharing with one of her nieces.  Every letter & card closes with how much each missed seeing the other and reassurances that they would see each other soon.

  27. Alison says:

    When my husband and I were dating I was in college and he worked retail, so our schedules rarely clicked.  Since I had a really hard time being apart from him and neither one of us had cell phones back in the day, I took to writing him notes and leaving them in his car or under his windshield.  These little notes were mad with the purple prose, let me tell you.  I guess I was making up for him being a man of very few words.  After we were engaged I was so frustrated with the wedding planning that I wrote him a letter suggesting we elope, and left it on his car.  Amid all my rambling and whining I said something to the effect that all I wanted was to wake up next to him every morning with our legs intertwined, was that too much to ask?

    That night, after I got out of class, I found a card laying on the seat of my car.  It was white, had a little red heart on the outside, and only a few words inside.

    “Our legs intertwined, that’s what you said.  I love you.”

  28. Anne says:

    Here’s a lovely romantic moment, alas, not a love letter:

    I was just divorcing.  It was turbulent.  It was creepy.  I was a woman without a compass.  And I was being pursued by a rogue who likes damsels in distress. 

    One evening after I spouted a lengthy rant about my soon-to-be-ex, said rogue took my face gently in his hands, looked tenderly in my eyes and said “Your ex is an ass” before kissing me passionately.

    He moved on to other damsels, but his affectionate words of assurance and that dose of testosterone helped me regain my confidence and sense of self.  I’ll always love him for that.

  29. Peaches says:

    and here I was thinking about moving to Chicago…

  30. Chanel19 says:

    My love and I had a long distance relationship.  He was in the military and stationed in Germany, I was in Canada.  Every Tuesday without fail there was a pale blue, airmail envelope in the box.  (Hey, longdistance calls were expensive back in the ‘80s and cell’s were still in fantasy land).  For the better part of two years, every week a letter.  He’d come on leave and I’d make a trip over once a year.

    The one and only letter he sent my father, asked for permission to marry me.  I found it after my father died. 

    He also had to fill up forms requesting permission to marry a foreign national.  He must have loved me to state it in triplicate.  The best laugh, I got out of it was when asked if I was in the “family way”, he replied that he preferred direct deposit and an not air mail.

    We married and divorced.  Recently I got a letter.  He’s matured (haven’t we all).  He’s available and so am I. 

    Do I want a weekly letter again? 

    E-mail may be faster, IM’s may be right in your face.  But the anticipation is priceless

  31. Dagny says:

    The first boy I ever loved didn’t think of me as anything other than a friend until I decided I had to move on and started dating someone else.  Once he found out about it he sent me my first “love letter,” an email that read, “I love you.  That’s the last thing I’m ever going to say to you.”

    I of course marched across the street, from my dorm to his, and started throwing things at him.  Sadly, this drama set the tone for the rest of the relationship.

  32. Kate Pearce says:

    My hubby and I spent a year apart when we were at college-he wrote to me about 3 times a week-I have all his letters. They are so cute even 22 years of marriage later 🙂

  33. theo says:

    @Lauren,

    This is just my opinion and no one else has to share it, but if love is so ‘casual’, then to me, it’s not really love.

    ‘Casual’ to me doesn’t stand up to the lost job, or the lost limb, the every day boring that comes with living together for 30 years, the unselfish desire to give up what you don’t have but strive for, so your mate can have their heart’s desire.

    It’s the two am feedings and the baby vomit and the digging you out of the mud without telling you how stupid you are, it’s his buying you tampons when you’re too sick to go yourself, and not dying of embarrassment in the process. It’s still loving someone when you’ve fought all week about something stupid and you just can’t stand the sight of each other anymore.

    It’s a million things that get in the way of your relationship that the two of you work through together, instead of throwing in the towel when things get a bit rough.

    Hang on to your idea of love. You had a great example.

  34. Tibbles says:

    Lol Val.  I use the Winnie the Pooh quote as my signature on Skype and my e-mails. 

    My hubby doesn’t write letters of any kind.  I’m lucky if he will e-mail.

    But when he goes to the florist he has them remove the flowers I am allergic to or he has them do a special bouquet with my favs. And he only does flowers as a surprise never on a holiday or anniversary.

  35. My husband’s not a letter writer (unless you count the kind you tape to the back of car windows while the unsuspecting fool aka me drives down the highway with).

    He does have his moments – particularly when he decided to officially propose and painted (on cardboard, thank God) on the side of my 90 foot barn, “Chris, Will you marry me? Check Yes or No.”

    Unfortunately, he got caught in the middle of doing it by my grandparents so the entire world knew, and probably drove by my house, before I did.

  36. Mel L. says:

    This isn’t from a letter, but rather a few lines from an old Irish poem I read years ago that has always stuck with me about two young lovers in the forest. To me it resembles one of those perfect moments where you’re just totally at peace with the one you love and the world recognizes that fact and quietly nods her head in approval.

    “The woods woke about us for a lullaby
    And the blue waves in music broke.”

  37. by Jen: there are those kind of men out there who listen and try to give you your heart’s desire.

    When my now husband and I first started dating it was winter in Ohio and this transplanted Louisiana girl was cold. We would often take walks in the evening after which I was in need of a warm drink, only I didn’t drink coffee. I wished for cocoa but accepted the herb tea he offered. The next time I came to visit him, he had a canister of Swiss Miss ready. Fifteen years later, that still touches me.

  38. Franziska says:

    Two years ago my husband was deployed to Iraq and I sent him a red,silk rose for Valentinesday. When he got of the plane, and I hugged him for the first time in seven months, he pulled the rose out of his uniform pocket . He kissed me and gave it back to me, that was two weeks before our tenth wedding anniversary.

  39. Dayle says:

    During the first two years of our relationship, my husband spent over half of that on business in Korea, and eachg trip invariably stretched longer than originally planned.

    I was able to visit him there at one point, though, and when I arrived he presented me with the following poem:

    There is an old Korean custom
    where lovers gather the leaves
    of the jinko tree
    as they fall.

    They press and dry the leaves
    until they are as smooth and flat as paper,
    whereupon the scribe
    expressions of love
    for each other.

    It is with respect,
    and honor,
    that I present these to you
    as a token of our love.

    It is also with regret,
    because there are not enough jinko leaves in Korea
    to express the joy I feel
    when we are together.

    The leaves he wrote the poem on are framed and hang in our bedroom. As far as I know, it’s the only poem he’s ever written…

  40. Elin says:

    In the beginning of our relationship my boyfriend randomly sent me a text:

    I love you. A lot.

    It still gives me warm and fuzzy feelings :o) Very simple, but very direct, and very spontaneous.

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