There Are Windows for Love

There Are Windows for Love

an oldie but a goodie about seizing opportunity

Here is a letter exchange between me and a beautiful friend I had coffee with just yesterday. And now she is engaged to be married! I love both her letter and my reply. And it has me thinking about that monk’s advice and wondering what window I am in now, what window we are in?

That first love of mine recently retired from his very high position in Homeland Security. And I remember almost no Russian and not much Buddhism either. But I hunger for meaning lately, and that feeling of possibility.

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Dear Emily,

I’ve been thinking off and on about dating, whether to bother or not, where and how I’d meet someone, if I wanted to meet someone, etc. At 43 with 2 kids and enough space behind me to appreciate the hard things I’ve been through, I’m nearly always quite content to be single.

Then corona came along and it seemed especially reasonable to think Ya, now’s not a good time.

But my 13 year old daughter is at the beginning of her first dating/boyfriend experience. She would take it slow anyway, but between his concerned parents and COVID-19 they are chugging along at a beautifully slothful pace. They connect over Google chat, planning in advance when they’ll both be at their computers. My daughter likes me enough to tell me lots of wonderful details like how he said he woke up, put on a suit, went downstairs and made pancakes (!! I really like that) and she showed me a pic of two LEGO people he made to look like her and him. They show each other the music they like and plan for days when they can get coffee or go to the movies.

All this is making me see corona maybe the perfect time to fall in love. At no other time in my adult life have letters, texts and phone calls been able to play such a primary role. I love how certain questions like “Do I really want to kiss him, or is that just two glasses of wine talking?” are just off the table because right now there’s no restaurant, no date, no wine and no kiss possible. Right now the only thing we have is space, 6’ minimum. Enough space to get to know someone. I’m not sure that I have a question. I am open to having a corona boyfriend pen pal.

Sincerely,

Love in the Time of Corona

Dear Love in the Time of Corona,

I can tell by your letter that you remember how falling in love is glorious and also a gigantic hardship.

My first love (and I mean the kind of falling in love that is basically a mental disorder and a magic spell and an incident of worldwide concern) was in the spring of 1990, on a little Army base in Arizona. A bunch of us were waiting for our 3-month interrogation training course to start up, and in the meantime we didn’t have much to do but clean the barracks, sort rocks, do push-ups, and sit around on our work breaks in the common room in our fatigues reading books.

There I sat. But I wasn’t reading this time. I was too busy being alive to possibilities. I was ready to start something.

I’d just arrived to Arizona after a tumultuous year at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, where I’d studied Russian for eight hours a day and spent the rest of my time swimming, having unconsummated affairs with dashing boys, and becoming friends with interesting kids from all over the country.

Every week, I’d visit my Russian teacher at her bungalow on the edge of the base and listen to tales of life under the Soviet regime, while she pet her two giant German shepherds, who were like her children, she said. Afterwards, I’d walk the lush, quiet streets of town back to the barracks, breathing in the eucalyptus, my body lithe, my energy searching for a worthy outlet, my heart nearly bursting with love that didn’t yet have an object. (My Army paycheck was $420 a month and one time I invited two friends who lived down the hall from me to go to the rooftop bar at the luxury hotel downtown and we ordered oysters and shrimp and many drinks and I paid with two crisp $100 bills.)

And now Arizona: red, stretched out for the eye to see, curtailed. Drill sergeants, an animal I hadn’t had to deal with at all at language school, (but had become acquainted with in Basic Training) roamed the halls looking for marks. I was constantly being dropped for push-ups in the barracks hallways. In a letter home, I estimated to my mother that I was doing about 300 involuntary push-ups a day.

The soldier sitting opposite me in the lounge in Arizona was reading a book I had just read myself. I think it may have been The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1968, about the graduating class that lost the most members to the Vietnam War. Or it might have been Colonel Hackworth’s book About Face, an account of his experience in the Vietnam War, where he was one of the most decorated and the youngest colonel in the U.S. Army (because he had lied about his age to join the Army at age 16).

Anyway, I knew the soldier reading the book would be surprised that I too had read it, just the week before.

He had blond hair shaved short, of course, and hazel eyes, a stubborn chin, full bottom lip. There was something squirmy about him that matched my own fidgetiness—we both had too much energy for the room.

I said something confrontational about his book. Maybe my blunt two-sentence critique? I can’t remember what I said, but he lowered the book and immediately engaged me. Finally, someone good to argue with! He was smart. His voice was a little nasal but raspy at the same time. He had long eyelashes and a pack of cigarettes in his pocket. Another smoker, hooray! When he smiled, his upper lip sort of disappeared, giving him a sexy chipmunk look—naughty. All I can say is that I did love him, the moment he lowered his book and looked back at me.

I asked him to show me what Korean looked like, written out. (He’d studied Korean while I’d been studying Russian.) It was like a magical secret code. I wrote him a letter back, right then and there in the lounge, not only in Russian, but in mirror writing Russian. (I was always proud of my mirror-writing ability.) Pretty soon, the very next day in fact, we were writing each other love letters, in English. I kept his to me in my foot locker, with my regulation rolled up socks.

He was an Aries, like me, and a Mormon, tattooed, sexy, brilliant, totally uncowed by military authority. He swore a lot. His first gift to me was a knife with a multicolored handle made of dyed woods pressed together in swirls. My heart sank. A bad luck gift. On one of his arms was a tattoo of a beautiful redheaded woman, her hair swirling. He said it was his sister. He was one of eight kids. Within a few weeks, I was falling apart. I was 19 years old and I was a mess. What had God done to me? I’d never dreamed love was so real. We made out on a hill overlooking the main part of the base. “Do you think they’re filming us?” I asked him, pointing to a blimp or a water tower, I can’t remember which. “Yes, probably,” he said.

I think you should definitely go with this feeling you are having, of ripeness and possibility. Even if it crashes and burns.

Once, my husband Marshall gave me the most romantic gift: A weekend class at the Buddhist monastery. We took the class together, crowded in the temple with 15 or 20 others, sitting on meditation pillows facing the monk while he spoke to us in Tibetan. I scribbled notes as fast as I could write them—recording the translator’s translation. I asked questions during the question period. At night my mind raced with all I was learning.

At a lunch on the second day of the class. the monk allowed us to take photographs with him. When it was mine and Marshall’s turn, the monk stretched out his arms and put one around each of our shoulders. It was a special moment of such warmth. I felt grateful to have been able to be in the monk’s presence and teaching for all of those hours. Marshall agreed. Such calm, strong love that it felt like a gift. Well, of course, it was a gift!

The monk said to Marshall that they must have been in another life together—their connection was so marked. He also told Marshall that it is important to seize these brief, fleeting windows of spiritual fervor/curiosity. “Don’t assume it will last forever,” the monk told Marshall.

There are windows.

You’re not sure you have a question and I’m not sure that was an answer! But I think you welcome this window and know it’s special, even if you never dreamed it would come with a global pandemic.

If I hear of any wonderful pen pals searching for delightful correspondence, I will let you know. But one is probably already on the way.

Yours,

Emily

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