love letters

The CD I was listening to as I drove away from the lovely little cottage that was my home for the past two weeks on Cape Cod was comprised entirely of love songs, and the note inside the CD said that the songs were chosen to represent the power that love holds over us and the way in which we experience the passing of time when we're in love.  My heart's been swimming a bit the past few days, a whirlpool of adored fragments; the wood in the Cape Playhouse, the yellowing posters on its walls, documented by a man who cares that it be remembered who worked there, and that he stood on the same stage as they; Julie Harris, 85 years old, standing in the green room to shake our hands after being in our audience; the ocean, and a shell handed to me by a new friend; the joy of making people laugh, and of agreeing to fall in love night after night after night.  On the beach, a place where I spent a lot of time with my Grandfather, and back in my home, where the books he gave me sit on shelves, I think about him who died just three weeks ago, who never said the words "I love you" to me, but who was certainly a man who loved--women, books, paper, saving a dime, his grandkids.  I loved him like I love stories, memories, theatres--things, places where you can, as the great Paul Simon says, "make every lover the love of your life."  Where a scrap of paper is romantic, and the hidden story behind a tube of lipstick, or a pen stain inside the pocket of a shirt, sends your imagination spinning.  There's a lot I don't know about my Grandfather, so I write my ideas of him in my mind, a love letter to family, to ancestry, history and future.  In The 39 Steps, Richard Hannay is consistently told he has no heart, that he has no one to love, that he has no one to come home to.  And yet, he finds little whispers of love all around him; he wants and is wanted but he just can't stop running long enough to claim it.  Until he does.  And I do all the time.