I love you just as warmly as the sun is shining...

As I was staying the farm last week my mom was cleaning upstairs in what use to be the bedrooms of her and her siblings and my grandparents.  On the back porch amidst lots of other "stuff" that held no interest for me there lay some trunks and old suitcases.  Just waiting to be opened.

Worn from the weather and time these trunks & suitcases held all kinds of things, dresses my mom & aunt wore to some dances, pictures of family members that I did not recognize, barely visible from fading, ledgers that my grandfather kept of all the mileage he put on his vehicle, receipts for trees and lots of other odds and ends. Then there were the letters, lots and lots of letters.  Letters from my mom to my grandfather when she was first married, letters from my aunts and uncles back home while they were in school and the ones that I found the most interesting, letters my grandfather wrote my grandma while she was in nursing school in NYC.  LOVE LETTERS.

Here is a an excerpt from one of those letters.

It is so nice and warm here today.  All day long the wind has gently been blowing from the east coming directly off the bay and ocean.  How fresh and invigorating it is.  I love an eastwardly wind, though I know that it is a sign of rain.

Roses and flowers are blooming, and all is so lovely.  The sky has been blue and clear, and as I look at it I thought of you sitting up there on top of the nurse's home looking up at it.   Well just remember the same blue sky that hovers me also covers you.  Thank God we have those in common.  

I love you just as warmly as the sun is shining, and too you know, warmth makes life come again.   

Yours till we meet.

And here is another section of one of his letters.

When I came to the house today to get my dinner or lunch I walked to the edge of the bank and looked to the other side of the river.  How beautiful were the banks of the other side, how green and what a perfect picture of landscape they made.  I wondered if the bank upon which I was at that time standing appeared as beautiful as did the banks upon which I was then looking.  And to my mind came this thought, that often we are much or appear a little better to someone else that we do to ourselves.  For instance, you do not think that you are nice looking, but to me an artist could not paint a picture that I would love better than I do you, just as you are.  

Who writes like this anymore?  This was a simple man, a farmer.  His words, not simple but complex and full of passion written almost 80 years ago to a women who had captured his heart.

I almost felt like an intruder peeking into a secret part of their lives.  But I kept reading, letter after letter.  And then I wanted to share parts of those letters with you because I wanted to say ~ WRITE SOMEONE.  Sit down with pen and paper and write.  No text, no email, no Facebook posting on someone's wall...hand to pen, pen to paper writing.  It's becoming a lost art.  When we take the time to actually handwrite a letter it says something to the recipient.  I slowed down, sat down and wrote down words to a friend, a mom, a sister, a husband.

So I challenge you - write someone this week.  Write a love letter ~ tell someone  "I love you just as warmly as the sun is shining."