To add to the title: I am still a romanticist and a total sucker for a good love story and so are most of you. The only difference is that I just adore writing these stories as well.
An astute and alert reader just sent me a link that my blog from several years ago, was quoted in COSTA RICA just last month in December, in an article on First Love. (See here – you have to scroll down past the photo to get to my name where quoted) This piece on first love is one of my most heavily circulated articles worldwide, and I have also become a Dear Abby of forlorn first love people, as they write me from all over the world as a result of that, and my mailbox has many such letters. The actual blog (read on that link if you are a newer reader) was published several years ago, but it just won’t die.
I also wrote a column for the Houston Chronicle newspaper for a few years on love stories, and we included several wonderful first love stories. For those reasons my editors have encouraged me to write a book on first love and/or do one on love letters. Maybe all of the signs above point to that as my ultimate destiny, yet I haven’t done so mainly due to time constraints. I am contemplating doing it when I have some free time.
Still just recently I got a major scoop on a great long lost love story. It was a story of a lost love letter, and the writer was a guy who is now a physician in Houston. He sent it 30 years ago from Bellaire, Texas to Germany and it never got to his first love (from high school days) who was visiting Germany. It was written in the 1980’s and returned to the return address oh, only about 30 years later.
Of course the physician, who back then was a high school kid, did not live at that address any more, nor did his parents. So the person who was living in the home, seeing the unusual original postmark date, was on a hunt to find the owner of the letter. She also opened it and read it.
After reading the letter of mushy first love, the resident tried to find the real owner and originator of the letter for several years. She did not think to circulate it on Facebook.Fast forward to 2016 – a simple story about the above dropped on a Facebook group, not only led to finding the physician who wrote it as a sixteen year old, but the intended girl recipient was found as well— she now no longer lives in Houston.
Due to the fact that both are married with families now, they did not want publicity over their “first love” but there was huge interest in the contents of the letter by everyone who tried to help solve the mystery on Facebook. It will remain unpublished. Darn it.
I tried to reach out to them and do a Huff Post story on this, but there was no interest unfortunately, despite my excellent credentials – a writer hates losing a good scoop like that one!
Coincidentally I was sorting through things during TWO moves this past year due to flooding, and I found an old unsent and unfinished love letter of my own, pressed inside a record album that I have had since the 1970’s. Long story short, I was throwing away a ton of album covers that were flood damaged with vinyls remaining intact when I found it. I did send it to the person it was addressed to, as I am friends with my first love and feel comfortable doing that with him. (PS – It wasn’t very loving – more lecturing, and poorly worded; fortunately my writing has come a long way since then.)
There are tons of love stories out there, tons of first love stories, and now there is a movie that is critically acclaimed and the talk of the town about a sweet but intense first love. It is called La La Land, and this movie moved me to tears. I highly recommend it, not just because I am a romanticist and a sucker for love stories, but because of the whole essence of quality of work on this film that is luminescent to me. It won every award it was nominated for (at least a half a dozen) at the recent Golden Globes, but that doesn’t mean much, although it was very deserved.
I won’t tell you much about it in case you haven’t seen it, but I will tell you that I related to them encouraging each other to follow their dreams. I had that too, and I think one of the reasons I became a writer was due to early encouragement.
At any rate, let me know your reactions to La La Land, or the mysterious, never-delivered letter, or about whether you would love to read a treasure trove of old love letters, or simply hear more love stories.
… My favorite blog from you to date! I enjoyed reading about the “historic” love letter, about your hidden love letter, and about the newest, heart-tugging story: La La Land. I think I have always been sentimental to the extreme, and a romantic old soul! I am such a sucker for a great love story. My favorite ones deal with that feeling of longing, i.e. Splender in the Grass, West Side Story, The Notebook, and now LA LA Land.
Your story about your own love letter, brought flooding memories back to me about my own love letters. I remember that right before I got married, for the first time, back when I was 21 years old, my mother convinced me to throw away all the love letters I had received from previous guys in my life. Much later I regretted having done this. In the 25+ years after my divorce, and before I remarried, I had an opportunity to gather a box of new love letters from the many dating, short-term, and long-term relationships, that I had experienced. These (sentimental me), I have held onto! However, my most treasured ones, fill an entire box on their own… and they are from one person: my husband, Warren. This is not a box of cards, but letters, notes, and beautiful personally written love stories… Just for me! I love that your blog inspired me to take this sentimental walk down memory lane!