Tag: unrequited love

Falling in Love with a Man of the Sea

Below is a telegram that my father sent to my mother some seventy years ago.

“Dear Toots, just a few lines, but don’t know if it will go ashore or not, as this place is only a port of call. I don’t know where we are going from here, but I don’t think it will be a long trip, so I hope to see you soon.”

 ~ Simon J. de Jong (Somewhere in England, January 28, 1945) 

I, like she, fell in love with a man of the sea. It was through reading his correspondence to her that I have become able to identify the characteristics of these men, and possibly better understand us, the women who love them. His letters to her have shown me that love is eternal and cannot be limited or confined to a specific time in history. This is my story and I believe it was my mother’s also. Continue reading “Falling in Love with a Man of the Sea” →

When Love is Too Much

[Spring has arrived and I have moved outdoors and taken my lazy, winter-indulged body to the park for long, cerebral walks. It  was during one of those outings that I met a woman who was sitting alone on a bench near the pond. Having spied this older, eclectic-looking woman and wanting to get a closer look at her, I slowed my pace and came to a halt just short of the pond. There had been something curious about her that caused me to do so. As I approached her I sensed an un-earthly aura surrounding her; she had lived a full life, seen many things, and had a story to tell. By nature I am not a social creature, but I am out-going and friendly which allowed me to strike up a conversation with this woman. She was easy to talk to and I suppose she felt the same about me, because within a very short amount of time we were discussing the story I pen below. It is an extremely shortened version, of a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, which leaves the reader, the writer, and the protagonist with a longing for answers to a mystery that was left unsolved decades earlier.]    

She said to him, “Why are you so much of an avoidant?  You and I are in the autumn of our lives. I want more, don’t you?”

Despite all the previous failed attempts to engage him, she still believed that she had enough fire in her belly for the both of them if only she could find the way to light a spark. She continued, in her typical devil-may-care approach to life, by trying to fan a flame that she knew surely must exist somewhere within him.

“Let’s buy a house with a barn for you and a library for me. Continue reading “When Love is Too Much” →