“She wrote you a letter.”
He came into my study, while I was sitting there alone, this evening and handed me the letter. It was an old paper. Not that the letter was old enough but it was written on an old piece of paper. The ones that had no lines of ink on them to guide us how to write on a straight line. The plain ones, the ones that turn yellow as they age and become a little smooth at the edges.
I took the letter and waited for him to leave. He went right out and I opened it up. The first thing that I had read until then was that it was addressed to me.
****
Honey,
It was a weird thing I realized in the shower today. Do you remember how it had been just a month and a half that we’d been together and you had said that ‘How could we have come this close in this little time’? I did not have the answer to that. You posed the question, so clearly enough, even you did not have the answer to that. As a consequence of which, we passed through it. It struck my mind that before that month and a half, we knew each other well but not really knew each other. In that one single month, we saw each other inside-out. That clearly meant that we fell in love with each other for who we really were. We saw what we really were, the laughter together, the smiles, the tears, the fears, the injuries and everything else that was inside us. We saw it all, the good, the bad and whatever did not lie in those categories. We saw it all and fell in love with each other for that. For a few little things, I’d say that we fell in love with each other in-spite of those things. It didn’t really matter how we got that close. What mattered was that we fell in love with who we really were. The truth. How often does that happen? Not too often, I suppose.
As I kept thinking about it, I went back to the night when we had said it out loud that we wanted to start living together as soon as we could. More than that, we wanted to start travelling together. Today, I’m writing this letter to you because I express myself the best in writing and it is easier to explain things to the fullest. I know it is weird and it has been sixteen years to that night. We have travelled a lot together and did almost everything that was there on the check-list. But here’s the deal. If you like it, we’ll just do it.
The moment you feel right about, regardless of when it is, how soon or how late, we will do it. We’ll just pack ourselves up, just the two of us, leave for a place we’ve never been to and from there just head places we don’t even know the names of. We’ll just walk around, looking at what that place really is about. The people that live there, the way they live, the different things they have than us, the different places they have than us, breathe the air they breathe for it will be sure be different from what we breathe every day. Maybe, while we’ll be walking, we’ll reach a place where there is nothing but abundance. The peaceful abundance we’ve been looking for. Maybe we will reach a place where there exist no horizons and the rain feels just right. A place where we won’t feel like holding each other’s hands or sit right next to each other but just keep sitting there the entire evening without even feeling the need to look at one another once yet know that we are both there, with each other. A place where the breeze that hits our face is just right and feels cold in our hair. A place where peace asks for a sneak out.
I wonder if that place even exists or not but knowing what wonders this world can be doing, it is worth a shot to try finding such a place out. We can go to the local library and sit there for a while in silence, read a book there and see what the people there like to read. The bookshelf that covers the local magazines or the books of local interest in that place is what we can go looking for. There can be so much to do. Probably the things I’ve listed out until now are all those things which are capable enough of being done by a lone traveler but the truth to be caught out here is that it wouldn’t really mean anything if you weren’t there. It really wouldn’t mean as much to me as I wish it does.
We can have coffee at any place that you like followed by a walk in the cool weather of the night or maybe just a beautiful sleep. Whatever happens, I’m sure it will all be worth it.
Let’s travel together, like we’ve never done it before.
*****
Once I was done reading the letter, I put it aside, smiled to myself for a moment and then walked out the study. Just as I was about to exit though, he came back to me.
“Daddy, mom’s asking if you read it or not?”
“That’s exactly what I’m off to answer her for, son.”
I kissed my four-year-old a ‘good-night’ and walked straight to my bedroom, where, as expected, she’d been reading a book.
“Are we ready to pack hon?”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
“Yes.”
That had probably been the widest smile that I had seen on her face in the seventeen years I’ve known her for. I haven’t had a better drive than this one in my entire life.
