A Small Pearl

It’s a gray Wednesday afternoon, and the rain is gently tapping on my windows.

And I have moved back with equal gentleness into the comforting yesterday of my life.

The letters are tied with an aged, and like their owner, wrinkled, blue ribbon. I keep them tied securely in a black faille purse, and when I feel the need to be loved again, I take them out of the seclusion of the walk-in closet.

Today was such a day. Isolated for seven weeks, and becoming more and more uneasy about my physical abilities once I emerge, the words we shared ever so long ago, soothe my aching heart.

It was the summer of 1951. He had left for government training in Washington D.C. on July 15th and would receive an assignment in another area of the country in mid October.

It was a time of many impossibilities, not the least the ability to plan a wedding. Engagement was not an option; I had already declined the traditional solitaire. Looking back and trying to analyze my reasoning, I feel conflicted.

Perhaps I could be evasive and say I never liked diamonds. And yes, there is a truth to that. While traditionally, as Carol Channing often chanted, the brilliant gem may be considered a girl’s best friend, not for me. I always preferred something of a lower key, a tiny pearl or perhaps a solitary sapphire.

However, that was not the reason I declined the traditional period of betrothal long anticipated by most young women of my generation.

I truly believed my young lover and I had been given a small window of time to seize. If we postponed it, it would be forever gone.

There were rational reasons, among them family issues, but primarily, my instincts seemed to cry out, if not now, then never.

The letters began the day he left during the year when there were three mail deliveries daily. They chronicle the journey we shared together wrestling with the hurdles that seemed to mount until the day love conquered them.

We were married the day after he completed his training, October 22, and during the many travels we shared during the years that came, the letters came with me.

I never opened them again until our final goodbye, September 7, 2008, when I needed them once more.

And I do that now more often than I expected. Covid 19 has erupted with a vengeance, literally isolating not only I, but others, from familial comfort and support.

I am finding my strength now in the letters written 69 years ago by a young man to his love, who disdained a diamond ring.