A Love Letter

You love someone. Write them a love letter.

No politics today, just a tiny piece of our culture. I think we need more love letters. And public ones are good. Today Annie and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. Here she is reading to Johanna and Asa a year or so after we moved back to Iowa in 2005. Below is a letter I wrote to her about 15 years ago.

---

Gifts

When I first looked into your malachite eyes

so many years ago I forget, they drew

me in and I fell like a pebble down a well

except for the splash, cause I just kept

falling and have never hit bottom.

And I knew that there was something

ancient and wise in you that I would never

understand, but it didn’t matter, because

I just knew that I had to be close to it.

In its glow. Whatever it was. And is.

And in my wisps of memory, I remember

driving up a hill and watching a girl walk

up the sidewalk, and me thinking in my

loneliness that I wished that I had

a girlfriend with a nice butt like that.

And then the girl turned her head,

and miracle of miracles she smiled

at me and she was you.

And ever since that first gift of a smile,

you’ve brought me immeasurable

bounty. Much better than Zeus’ gifts to

Copia, Fortuna, and Pax. The cornucopia.

Years of interesting conversations most

couples won’t have in a lifetime

about issues both mundane and sublime.

Always thoughtful, if not always in agreement.

Miles of roads traveled, hand in

hand with each other, and sometimes

with ancestors, both yours and mine.

Time stands still, and flies.

Acres of understanding of my strange

Iowa man/boy ways. Sometimes

above and beyond your own best judgment.

Thank you.

And my God, the gifts of children,

first yours, then ours, then ours again. Then

lovely grandbabies. You brought your teeming

river of life up and over the banks, immersing me.

Joyfully.

And now I’m the luckiest guy in the world

pulling kid’s bikes out of the driveway,

cooking spaghetti for the millionth time,

unplugging clogged toilets, hearing

the story of Archaeopteryx yet again,

among thousands of the other small

joys of our good life.

And believe it or not, every time

I look into your green eyes, they still draw

me in and I fall like a pebble down a well

except for the splash, cause I just keep

falling and know that I will never hit bottom.

Here we are, at our wedding in New Mexico. Time stands still, and flies.

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Before you go, Julie Gammack has pulled together some Iowa scribblers trying to make a difference. If you value our work, please share, subscribe, and comment. And if you can afford to, be a paid subscriber. And, thanks to Julie, and to Kathie Obradovich with the Iowa Capital Dispatch, our work will be featured on occasion in that important publication. You should support their work too if you can afford it.

Here we are, in alphabetical order:

Laura Belin: https://laurabelin.substack.com/about

Doug Burns: https://theiowamercury.substack.com/about

Art Cullen: https://artcullen.substack.com/about

Julie Gammack: https://okobojiwriters.substack.com/about

Beth Hoffman: https://inthedirt.substack.com/about

Bob Leonard: https://rleonard.substack.com/about

Chuck Offenburger: https://chuckoffenburgeriowa.substack.com

Mary Swander: https://maryswander.substack.com/about

Iowa Writers: https://iowawriters.substack.com/about