For any flaws I could list, and some are rather serious; My husband was masterful at dating me, and my daughters are bereft; Most women have now sold short the wonders of courting and dating well, one of the great losses with women’s liberation. Who wanted to be liberated from the person who planned a first date with me, for fear of losing me on first going out, and he admitted his concern that I would not like the textile muuseum, The Corcoran Gallery, or wherever we would dine. It took only a few weeks before he called me as soon as I got home from work, and if I failed to, I simply knew that he had changed his mind, that we  were getting too close, and my room mate told me what a lousy spoiled brat that I was to have him — I knew little about dating, way too much about older fellows who wanted me in their bedrooms, the advanced sexual favors without overt signs of love.  Needless to say, the room mate and I would live separately as soon as I could find a place. We found our restaurants, our walks, our stops along the way to be lovvers, holding on very tightly, one warm body under street lamps as the spring would come along. We shared a couple, mutual friends who introduced us, planned elegant meals with the right wine, and  the warmth of cognac to wisk away the chill. I wanted no liberation from that kind of love.  I fear a lot more women get, “Screwed,” now and some lucky ones make love where the intention is that you are lonely for one another’s arms, and soon the nights are too long to be parted. I am sorry daughters of Eve that so many will not share a courtship, for some rituals of past were worth preserving, and we spoke about marriage very early on — After two weeks time, the words were said, and over a year we would bond together.  I wrote him my book of poems, and within nine months, the phone calls would stop, and we were making marriage plans — The dance around the autumn trees under where we first met could bring us both to tears, and we now were with his mainly married friends, the new babies, eating the sweetest peaces from a Delaware farm, and I know he went back to Philadelphia to meet old friends a time or two without me, and I felt hurt the way one hurts when your not secure within, but I did not even want liberated from there hurt, for I had some parting to do with other men who were interested in me.  It even hurt to tell the first love good bye, though now I know I only fabricated that he cared other than as a boy meets girl.  I had women friends who were good enough to ask if they could go out with my old boyfriends, and I reassured them I was not involved any more.  Oh Daughters; Sweet daughters of this earth; How duped you are to not know knocks on the door where they have torn themselves away from an evening free with others, for they are addicted to you and you to them, and it has a pattern which worked for about one hundred or more years American women until you let some weird old ladies under the guise of liberation  take away the courtship, and some Christians — Catholics as Christians too still encourage the idea of romance — Not as inimate as ours, but that is not the point.  I do not envy you this day nor this hour, for I am liberated in all ways which mattered to me, to vote, to have a marriage partner, to share in most decision making, and we will grow how ever old we will be, and the door is still open in spite of limitations of health and challenges from a disturbed universee.  But I still hear the knock on the door, and it was alright for me to call him as we settled in, but for the phone to ring for me was the secret sigh of, “I will love you this night, and any night from here on.”

Dearest Michael,I wrote a longer note, but I am having computer problems which are unresolvable; so my new one is having office hooked up right now downtown.  Thank you God for Ultrabooks.  My dear friend, I do not wish for you to cry.  I stopped writing Christmas letters, for I would only do stories, not family chatter, and people told me they loved them, but it would bring them to tears.  I humbly feel it is only the loving individual who weeps over issues which are in each of our lives.  We live and long for passion, and we seek healthy ways to resolve it, and it may be that our lives surrounded us with classical music and the arts in addition to my nursing years, but none of the boys married without much forethought, and all did so very well.  The girls are computer babies, so my Mary has become a provider, and I worry about her constantly.  Catherine got mixed up in computer romances initially, and she wound up with men not worth her love, and you know that her solution has been greatly painful to me.I do not want you to feel sad sweet friend, for you have meant much to me as I struggle with a book which has a following but is about to break open when I get back to Cincinnati, and the river I watch each day.  It is so life affirming.I wish for you to love and to give love, to know passion, and to know that all women out there are not vacuous.  I have seen some beautiful relationships happen when people were able to look behind and find someone they thought  were out of their lives long ago.  I encourage people to give thought to that, for at our point in life — A lot of people are very lonely.  I will not tell you that you may not weep, for that is the mark of one who loves and loves deeply, so you are a gift to someone.  It is good to look ahead, and it is better to have a life’s partner, and you know what it feels like when one sees a person walk in a room, and you catch your breath.  I know, I know that it is a vacuous youth who do not understand that we continue to hold on to ideals of passion with love, but may we do so without shame or explanation to anyone. We are people from a different universe in some respects, and when my children look at their father and I and admit they cannot imagine us still in the embracing of youth, I spare them the lecture.You are a kind friend, and your encouragment has carried me a long way, for it would be so easy to give up on the quest of a life’s work, but please do not let me, because I have written, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” for the living and for the dead, for Southern Appalachians never had their story told, their murder of a life’s way, and what drove mothers and fathers to the breaking point.  I owe taking it to thousands, and the awards began last summer, but I have access to media once I am well enough to return to Cincinnati.Dry your tears precious one; and hold on to the thought that we may suffer from over romanticism, but I had rather have known the lives where arms gently held us in the dark, and we felt no fear for daylight to come.  How pathetic it appears to lay hands on keys instead of a warm body, to look at a tired old screen and not to smell the evening perfume fading in to the morning of a last embrace, so love on my angel friend, and know that you love well.  Passion is a gift, and mixed with love — One may endure all things.Thank you for helping me with confidence, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” has a wonderful following.  Your encouragment has calmed many of a day when fear that I cannot make this work in the over production of novels helps me to understand that I have something special, and you, my friend — I appreciate and love you for  reaching out, reassuring, and blessing my call.Sometimes, Michael, we need to look to our past, for many people are lonely, beautiful, and waiting for that one call which will change two lives.  Love on sweetheart, for it is a gift.Blessings, and Abiding Admiration,Barbara