What If This Were Your Final Letter?

In a world that once was in a place few ever visited a king and a queen roamed through the grounds of their private castle.

The queen told the king she would never forgive him for not finding her sooner and asked what he would do if they should ever be torn apart.

He smiled and told her it would only take one minute for their souls to know each other again and that if allowed him to kiss her that would remove all doubt.

She smiled and told him to remember she could be exceptionally difficult and that he wouldn’t want to work that hard.

He told her to never doubt his resilience and that he had no doubt she would choose to be naked for him again.

She rolled her eyes and asked why men always made it about sex and he said that wasn’t what he was referring to.

“You heart and mind, that is where I was going. If you give me your heart and mind again you won’t notice if your physically naked. But I might choose not to try. I might make you decide to catch me. I might remind you that you kissed me first.”

They roamed some more through the castle and before they left he told her he had left messages all over the place for when she would suffer from amnesia again.

“Well you better figure out how to get me to kiss you again or this might all be for naught.”

Can’t tell you how old I was when I wrote that or where because it has been a while but it popped into my head today when I sorted through stuff I was trying to decide to keep or let go of.

It got me thinking again about a writing assignment from a professor about what we would write if there was only one letter left to send.

It got me thinking if I would be able to bring the magic if I only had one more letter left and who I would send it to.

Angry Voices

A while back a divorced friend told me he was done with women and offered a litany of reasons why he was giving up on them.

I shared that Mark Twain quote and he said aside from sex he wasn’t sure he would miss them. I told him he missed the point, “no women, no men.”

He rolled his eyes at me and asked if I thought he had forgotten how irritated I was when that one woman chose to take a date out on her birthday that wasn’t me.

I laughed, it is not hard to find stories of time a woman has aggravated me or done things I thought were ridiculous.

“Hell I have been accused of a multitude of things, some of which were beyond silly. Especially when it came from someone who knew I would rip the arms off of anyone who tried to hurt them.

But I can’t say no criticism is accurate or that people don’t start fights when they want to maintain distance from you.”

We went back and forth a bit and I laughed and said that some people might be shocked by how easily I took credit for having a been a jerk or having done something wrong.

“We all grow up. I am not perfect and am guilty of my own knee jerk reactions sometimes. But I am not who I once was either but I am on my way to becoming who I am.”

****

That professor who asked us to write one last letter seemed pretty old but I bet I am older now than she was then.

Certainly old enough to have a more introspective process for trying to figure out what one last letter would be about and to whom.

Do you write one to your children, to a sibling, parent, lover or spouse. Does that letter have to be sent to someone who is alive or could you write it to someone who is gone?

Is it designed for expiation of guilt and sins or for education?

I don’t remember if we discussed any of this in class though we might have. Reminds me of a tour I took in Israel in ’85 and one I took 10 years later.

We went to many of the same places but the second time around I swore I learned things that weren’t discussed the first time.

Except the second time I was just short of 26 and the first I was only 16.

Maturity and ideas about whether I was going to make aliyah impacted how closely I listened during that second trip.

If I went on the same tour I would probably see more differences again because who I am now is so different than who I was.

When you’re 25 and you look at soldiers who are around 20 you think they are young but you don’t realize how very young.

Today I think and wonder about the influences of command and how many advances are sometimes made because when you are young enough to feel bullet proof you take chances an older man might avoid.

Anxious For Change

People often say to be careful what you wish for because you might get it. I might even be one of those people because I have been interested in things that didn’t always go as I hoped they would.

But the older I get the more I realize there are very few big mistakes in my life and that some of them would have come about no matter what I did.

So as I sit here anxious for change and working hard for the new chapter there is a part of me that says to be cautious and another that is pushing full bore.

Can’t get to where I want to be without being willing to take a chance so might as well do it while young and healthy enough to pivot if needed.