Love
Letter Written On My First Anniversary
by
Damyanti
I write to
you as the evening shadows draw close, with the tang of fog upon
my breath, the very first of this season. It had been an unlikely
December till last week, innocent of sweaters and woolen socks
and as I wrap my shawl a little closer, I feel your arms about
me as you left this morning for the airport. Joey woke up and
you patted him back to sleep, and left me warm and tangled in
the sheets, already waiting for you to be back.
It has always
been like this, though I never let you know of the waiting. The
first time I talked to you, on those typed pages, under the cloak
of names artfully chosen, moments became minutes and minutes gathered
to hours. When we could talk no more, I was yearning, restless,
and loath to admit it.
I gave you
my number, to a complete unknown and was scared of my lack of
trepidation because, amazingly, no logic I could muster would
dismiss my conviction that you were for real. You were not an
eighty year old posing to be thirty, or a psychopath stalker and
not indeed a woman masquerading as man.
As I talked
to you for days that spilled into weeks, I was tremulous, unsure,
as a spider thread launched into the breeze and it was as if in
you my soul found an anchor. You would talk to me of this and
that, of a pompous colleague or of a cab driver gone amok, of
the impending marriage in your neighborhood, an art exhibition
where a watercolor made you think of me. I would laugh, a building,
are you serious? I am really not that fat, you know! You would
move on to explain, but my mind would wander, I would stroll in
front of the mirror and examine myself, have the years of marriage
marked time on my face, am I as slim as before Joey came?
Those were
pretty dark times and you my only sunshine. Often, there were
days that I shut the windows of my soul. I changed my phone and
there was no way for you to reach me but when I opened my e-mail,
your words were the first I saw: hope you are fine wherever you
are.
Through those
months of waiting, whether for the axe to fall or for happiness
to strike I do not know, it was your voice that pulled me through
and the tug of Joey’s fingers. When I see the two of you
together, him on your shoulders with a fistful of your hair and
your impish grins mirror each other, I am happy I made the decision
to be part of your life and to make you a part of ours.
You have
become my spirit and my essence, my joy and temptation, the answer
to fervent prayers whispered with only half a hope of their fulfillment.
I revel in the freedom of the enclosure of your arms, the way
I am beautiful to you in the mornings without running even a comb
through my hair. And through the times before I married you, what
won me over was the way you somehow knew when to hold me close
and when to let me be. Especially when wrought out by a stampede
of emotions I would go off for long, lonely walks and return with
tear stained eyes, tears you knew to be of indecision, frustration,
and helplessness, shed for someone else. I would always come back
to find you pruning the roses or setting the kettle to boil or
simply lying back on the rocking chair under the porch with Joey
gurgling in your lap. You would look up, your eyes tranquil, secure
and shining with warm, undemanding affection, without the slightest
hint of enquiry.
People wiser
than I would care to argue with often say that extreme emotions
cannot be sustained for long. They use the body as the flame does
a candle, and the flame is never stronger than when the candle
is at its shortest.
So for a
love of two people to survive, it must be immortalized by the
death of one or both, or simply get lulled to companionship, or
worse still, slowly wilt under the weight of life's mundane tomorrows.
But you
were first a stranger, then a friend, afterwards a lover and now
my husband. You are the man who left spaces in our togetherness
as pauses in the cadence of a song. You saw through my unkempt
stance a heart in turmoil, and you I trust with all the simple
strength of my heart to be the one who would keep passions kindled
across time, keeping at bay both the tragic and the mundane.
I trust
as well that each day I pass with you now, one of your arms about
my shoulder as you introduce me to your friends, Joey on the other,
will remain with me as I grow older. The catch in your voice as
you see me step out of the bath when you were trying to tell me
about the watchman at your office, the subtle darkening of your
eyes as you totally forget what you were saying, grab me in your
arms and make me lose my breath in turn, will stay with me. I
trust these times will remain with me into the days when your
hair would be speckled with gray and I would probably lose my
breath climbing the stairs to the terrace.
As I write
to you now, I know that when you are back the next week I'll probably
tell you how much I love you and this letter may just seem superfluous.
But you may
save this to read again, especially at difficult times. Please
know that when you read it in the fifth, tenth or thirtieth year
of our marriage, I love you then as I love you today when our
marriage is a full year old, and we are miles apart, on our first
wedding anniversary.
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