Love under a hat

Dear Molly,

I have a photo of a girl in a tree with her sister who looked younger than you do now in your FB photo. You were recently wearing little more than a hat and a warm look, holding onto a young man who looks to me to be about the same age I was when I got engaged.

 I do not have all of the variables of this equation, so I don’t know exactty how old you were in these photos. But because of the directionality of time, I know that you weren’t the woman you would become in the first picture, but you are still the girl and now considerably more in the second picture.

And I am not happier now than I was thirty years ago when I became a lucky guy because I couldn’t have been happier then, but there have been more portions of happiness. Still I couldn’t be happier now, knowing that you and your guy could turn out to be as happy as Dawn and I have sometimes have turned out to be. Happier is simply not humanly possible when you are as happy in the moment as you can possibly be.

But nevermind. Even the probability that any of us could be happy at all is astronomically small. And yet, here we are.

I have another photo of a another young woman on a beach on her honeymoon who looks about the same age as you are now. Improbably for the day, she is wearing a pink flowing dress.

Ever thanks to continuity and good fortune, I still couldn’t love her more than I do and I did. If I could, I would try. And I do try to love each moment of every woman that I do love in the time and place and manner that I am able, falteringly and sometimes with grace. And so I found some love that I had ready for you when I met you and that portion of love is still changing, if not growing. And I am finding new, new loves from time to time. Is it possible that love has infinite possibilities? I don’t expect to live long enough to find out.

I have never met anyone more beautiful than the girls and the women in my life (and some guys
: )).

And you should understand that Dawn and you are in the eye of a beholder who must always gaze through a prism of time and love. If there is more to this mystery and its attendant beauty, I am still seeking. And still, so often I am content and well loved.

But you look good in your hat – but not better than you did when you were up in that tree a moment or two ago. And yet, neither you nor I can imagine how beautiful your life might still become.

I hope that you will be looking back on old pictures one day in your distant future and realize that I could never have made more sense than I am making right now. I only did and loved as I could.

May continuity and good fortune smile on you as it has smiled on me and my love. And hopefully the rough patches in between the beautiful moments will count for little.

Life does not compute. I’ll be counting 59 turns around the sun when you and your lucky guy are doing your 'I do's' at a moment in time.

Post photos. Drop by if you’re in the neighborhood. The tree you climbed is still there. This is us, then, and last Christmas. The same and changed. 

Now it'ts your turn to find the next part of your life. Beauty and love abound.

love,

bert