A Legacy of Love

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My dad wrote his first love letter in 1942.  As a Purdue engineering student at the time, he came to Richmond, Indiana, with a fraternity brother to celebrate Thanksgiving because he was short of cash for the train home to Pittsburgh. While in Richmond he had a blind date with my mom. “She was the smartest woman I ever met,” he once told me. “She was never uppity—and there was this light in those blue eyes.” He began hitch-hiking to Richmond regularly.

My dad wooed mom with Frank Sinatra music. In the coming years, he wrote a couple dozen love letters. I know because my mother admitted to me they were hidden in the nightstand by their bed. “He was no Romeo; he was an engineer,” my mom explained. “But his love letters showed me that he had a beautiful heart.” I wanted to read the letters.

Sandra's ParentsWhen dad graduated, they married and my mother followed him to Southbend, where my brother Les was born, and to Hartford, where I was born, and then back to Southbend where Charley was born, and eventually onward to Indianapolis, where we grew up in a suburb south of the city. In Indianapolis my dad helped design the first jet engine parts, and my mother undertook caring for our home and grew prize-winning roses.  Once she told me, “I missed my home in the early years of our marriage. Sometimes, I cried,” she admitted, “But your dad would hold me, and it was okay. Then we made our own home. Our own family.” She believed this was the most important thing you could do, and she did it well.

While she discouraged me from thinking I would grow up to be a homemaker, she embraced being one. I have endless images in my head of her hanging the laundry outside, scrubbing the kitchen floors, and sewing our clothes on her Singer Sewing machine. She hummed as she did her chores. Frank Sinatra tunes.

At noon each day my dad called my mom to check on the stock-market, but as I recall it now, he was really checking on mom. Telling a joke. Perhaps flirting with her. Since he was once was mistaken for Frank Sinatra, he would often insist he was the famed actor calling. Many afternoons after the school bus dropped me off, I would run up the hill, hoping for the smell of fresh-baked oatmeal cookies—my dad’s favorite. At four each afternoon my mother prepared a meatloaf or a casserole and then she took a bath and put on fresh clothes. When my dad pushed through the door with his briefcase, my mom always seemed to light up the room. Then there was a long, warm embrace. Every day.

My parents must have fought, but I only have images of them yelling at my brothers or me for bringing the neighbor’s dog in the house or forgetting to ask when we stayed late at school. When there was a disagreement brewing, dad had a tried and true line to spout, “No one can argue with a man who looks like Frank Sinatra.”

My dad met my mom on what he called “the luckiest day of my life.” They shared 72 years together, and during that time I took their love for granted, but I never doubted it. Only now do I realize my great fortune. When dad died five years ago, I asked my mom if I could read the love letters he wrote to her. She looked a little sad. “Your dad asked me to burn them a few years ago. At this moment, I am sorry I did.”

I would love to have those love letters. But at least I still hold in me the beauty of their story. Now my parents share a niche in a lovely church garden. I visit them from time to time to honor what they gave me and what they shared, a love that seems to have transcended time. This is my legacy of love. An incredibly fortune one.

What is your legacy of love?  Often we have to reach beyond the boundaries of family and even our losses to find them.  A sibling who has passed? A mentor?  A friendship? A lover? A pet? What is your legacy of love?

The Science of Love Letters

According to Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg, love is composed of three basic components–

  • Intimacy
  • Passion
  • Commitment

Which element matters the most when you are writing a love letter or declaring your love to another? While an ideal love needs all three, one study showed we prefer commitment above all else. It would a good idea to sign love letters with “Forever Yours” or “Love Always!”

The Gift of Being in the Moment

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I have a reading chair in my family room by the fireplace. It has been empty since March. Pre-pandemic I used to read with my preschool grandchildren in that comfy chair. Often they would go to my book stash, choose a storybook, and toddle back to our chair. I love nothing more than reading with a child in my arms. I miss nothing more.

But these days I don’t see the little ones often. When I do, it is outdoors, and they hide behind bear or dog masks. Baby Evy and four-year old Harper blow me air kisses, and sometimes Harper forgets and hugs my legs.

Macy used to be a regular here for sleepovers, but since the first surge of COVID, she has been in online school, and I see her mostly on Zoom. During this time, she has grown taller, more serious, and sounds far too mature for her nine years. The change feels too sudden. When I Facetimed her a few weeks ago to discuss what she wanted for Christmas, she warned, “Gigi, this is not a normal Christmas. I don’t want normal presents.” She placed her finger on her mouth and looked skyward. “I want to see my best friend, Ellie. I mean really see her. We are in the same class, like the same things, but we have never been allowed to play together. Also, I want a vaccine to save lives!” I could feel the pain of being nine and not having time with friends. Macy missed her buddies as much as I missed her.

The pandemic is changing us, and each one of us has faced the strain of adapting and rewriting our personal story. While I struggle with the distance from friends and grandkids, not all is lost. I am finding new ways to connect. One tradition popped up unexpectedly.

Now that I write at home—which is an internal battle of its own—I have begun rewarding myself by baking cookies some afternoons. Word trickled out to the grandkids and within weeks I was dubbed the new Picasso of Pastry. This is a lie. But I perpetuate this myth with the hope of rare and socially distanced visits with the littles in my backyard wrapped in the warmth of the desert winter. Lately, my favorite moments have happened on that patio where we remove our masks only long enough to munch a cookie, and we share what is happening. Our pandemic stories. Some sad. Some happy.

While I have not resorted to hoarding toilet paper, I am guilty of stock-piling a near-truckload of Betty Crocker Cookie Mix which comes in a surprising array of flavors from dark double chocolate to snickerdoodle. I am learning how to improvise with extra milk, teaspoons of Madagascar vanilla, and when needed–extra chocolate chips. I am learning to release my inner cookie monster and fill an entire role of wax paper with baked treats in short order.

Before Christmas I stamped out countless sugar cookies in the shapes of Christmas trees, Santa, stars, and even airplanes for Steven, my young grandson. Martha Stewart does not live here, but I have managed to do a reputable imitation given these strange times.

Of course, COVID left its imprint on our Christmas. Three of our friends are sick —one seriously. One-hundred-year-old Grandma Edna became so anxious about visiting our home that she called ten times on Christmas Eve to discuss it, and finally cancelled at the last minute. Steven ate so many gingerbread cookies he spent most of Christmas day in bed.

But it was Christmas, and we did our best to carry on. My sons and their families, eight of us, gathered on our back patio for a Christmas picnic. Afterwards four of us played our favorite new COVID game, double beachball soccer. The children made it up and the rules change often, but it centers on keeping two beach balls on the grass and kicking or hitting the balls that come to you to someone else before it rolls out of bounds. It seems no one ever wins this game, but no one ever loses either. With two active beach balls zigzagging in all directions, you can get your daily exercise in short-order! The air shimmers with children’s laughter.

Later when we munched iced sugar cookies and chatted by the fireplace. I asked the children how this Christmas was different, and there was no shortage of answers.

“It’s a stay-away, stinky-cheese-man Christmas!”  four-year-old Harper said with glee. We all laughed, and Harper explained. “At school we didn’t like to call it social distancing, so Mrs. Vargas let us choose a better name. We read this book, The Stinky Cheese Man.” Harper pinched her masked nose. “Whew. Everyone stays away from the stinky cheese man—and when someone forgets the six-feet rule, we say to them “stay-away, stinky-cheese-man!”  One-year-old-Evy squealed with delight, “Chee-eese!”

“That’s cool, Harper,” Macy said. “Gigi, I got some Roblox toys, but this year the best part of Christmas was seeing Ellie at the park two days ago. She is my best school friend, and we had never really seen each other.” She paused for emphasis. “Seeing a friend–that was the best gift! Also, we got the vaccine, and I think that is a good gift for everyone!  Maybe in a few months we can have sleepovers at Gigi’s, and we can all read together again in the reading chair!”

Her words rippled through my heart. Harper clapped. “Yeah. One of my favorite gifts is Gigi’s cookies!” she bellowed as she flew an iced airplane up-up through the air with hope.

There in the warmth of both the sun and the children’s words, I realized how fully I love sitting in this moment with their joyful energy. In the time of COVID that was undoubtedly my best gift.

Tis the Season

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“Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.” Maya Angelou

“Should we pull the holiday boxes from the attic?” my husband calls from the garage. It is the season, and I love the lights, my fake Christmas tree, and all of the Santa ornaments that I hang on it. Most of all I love hiding the special Santas throughout the house for my grandchildren to find. Harper and Macy count on this tradition. Usually that is reason enough to haul down the boxes.

“COVID is not stealing Christmas,” I call back to my husband. But I choke from the dust as the boxes begin to clutter the kitchen. As I wipe them down, I think of other traditions I love most. Baking coffee cake from mom’s recipe. Buying each child a special ornament. But the lights, and hanging way too many of them, is my favorite tradition. Last year I discovered crystal, twinkling star lights—energy efficient. I hung them everywhere. Inside and outside. At this darkest time of year, we need light. Especially now.

I recall the Lady with the Lamp. In third grade as I waited for the school bus, I hid in the back of the classroom reading the little orange biography books. Here I discovered Florence Nightingale. During her life she was revered not only for her nursing work that saved soldiers from death during the Crimean War, but also for her medical insights. She wrote, “It is the unqualified result of all my experience with the sick, that second only to their need of fresh air is their need of light.”  What I remember most about her: she was kind–taking patients flowers and making sure they were rolled out into the sunshine whenever possible.

After Nightingale and before antibiotics, many physicians and sanatoriums practiced light therapy for healing. Thinking back, the early Egyptians worshiped Ra, the Sun God, and the father of medicine, Hippocrates, advocated an idea that we seem to be embracing yet again—the healing power of sunlight.  Even the winter blues has a name, SAD, or seasonal affective disorder, that can be treated with light boxes or even better–sunshine. Current medical data shows light energy has profound healing properties for us.

As I hang the lights on the tree, I think of Susan. While I am alone during COVID, I have new and wonderful friends in my Zoom classes. Susan Lugo who has stage three ovarian cancer has been an integral part of our Healing Journeys book club. While her cancer outlook is not good, her personal outlook shines through like the northern star. I feel she will make it. As we discussed our stories last week, she gifted our class a poem. It says,

I am not cancer.

I am life and light and energy and beauty and love

And giving and joy and delight and gratitude.

The memory of these words catches in my throat. The beauty of them. The truth of how we can align ourselves with light and energy and beauty and love–even when we face a life-threatening illness. Even when the holidays look bleak. Even when it will be only small gatherings until we loosen the grip of this pandemic.

Like Susan, I will choose light and energy and beauty and love in this season. I will wish this for all the people. Especially those I care about. For you.

To celebrate this thought, I stop decorating and place an online order for additional strands of crystal, twinkling star lights—energy efficient. There will be light.

Note: Here is a link to Susan Lugo’s beautiful poem.