Her Love Notes

My dearest-

I hope you are well. The last few months without you have been awful. I go through each day as if I'm a ghost in my own skin, wanting nothing more than to be with you. I never dreamed that I would end up here, with you thousands of miles-and another lifetime-away.

I know that it would have never worked, that what we had together was fleeting-but those few weeks were the greatest love I've ever known. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I suppose I never truly had another choice-people like me don't get to make decisions like that. We aren't allowed to dream, or to live in a fantasy, because our lives are just too damn practical.

It's a shame, really. Life shouldn't be wasted in the day to day droning of the seconds passing us by, or in the utility of an existence like this. I know he'll treat me well, though. I suppose that's what matters most now-it's what my parents expect, at least. Heaven forbid I disappoint them.

In any case, I'll soon know that same worry, that same restrained anticipation of staking esoteric dreams on a being that you can only control for a short while. I only hope that she'll never know the same misery I'm suffering now, and that I won't fall short in giving her the love she deserves.

-With Love, M.

As she stood there with her mother's small, well-worn black notebook in her hand, she wiped the tears from her eyes before they could mottle the elegant handwriting that flowed across the pages.

She had been gone for a month, but the pain was still as fresh as the rain falling outside. Now, it was up to her, the only child, to go through the material vestiges of her mother's life-no easy task considering her mother's fondness for keeping everything that had ever had any semblance of sentimental value attached to it.

She had already bundled up her mom's other journals and placed them carefully inside a storage box for safekeeping when she found this one at the bottom of the stack-alone in its departure from the usual red covers, and, as it turns out, exceptional in its content.

As she sat at the same kitchen table where they'd shared countless meals throughout her childhood and beyond, she sipped her mint tea-the only thing that was at once calming and bolstering in moments like these-and read through the pages of this singular account of enduring love.

She knew the story of how her parents met well-a typical college romance that culminated in an unexpected pregnancy, her own beginning-and a marriage shortly thereafter.

Now, nearly 35 years later, she'd lost both of her parents. Her dad, the year she went off to college herself, taken from them by a rare and incurable form of cancer. And now, her mother, who had succumbed to this new, unforgiving plague reminiscent of the one that came a century before and had claimed almost as many victims in its wake.

But this-this story of profound romance-was new to her, more an unexplored work of fiction than anything that resembled life as it had played out for her mother. As she reverently flipped through the pages of her mother's great love story, more questions than answers formed in her mind.

To her knowledge, her parents had never left the country-her father was far too pragmatic for such dalliances, and her mother had always been unremarkable in her own bearing-certainly not someone who would risk a comfortable existence at home for a love affair in Europe. And yet, as she read through the passages of time and longing, she recognized her mother's quiet fortitude and characteristic gravitation towards love in the passages.

And then, the letters abruptly stopped. By this time, her interest in the story was piqued, and she longed to know the ending.

She had always been cognizant of the restrained disappointment her mother had felt in not pursuing a career in writing. At the time, she had assumed that was the biggest lament of her mother's life.

Now, as she absorbed the details of a love cut short by time and circumstance, she began to wonder if this was truly fiction or something else entirely.

As she flipped through to the final pages of the notebook, she found a solitary envelope marking the end with her name on it. Curious, she slid her finger under the delicate paper flap.

My dearest-

If you're reading this letter, it's because I'm no longer here. While your heart must be broken now, I know that you are steadfast in your strength and you will get through this. I am so proud of the woman you've become-you possess an inner knowing that only wish I could have realized at your age.

I also know that if you've come across this envelope, it's because you've read my love letters. Over the last few decades, I always wanted to tell you about my-our-true origin story, but in the end I decided the balance and security of our lives wasn't worth risking.

You see, it wasn't your father that I wrote these letters to. When I met him, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was my future embodied. When you're in such a state of vulnerability as I was at the time, it's difficult to see past the pragmatics of economy and practicality.

I made a conscious, yet heartbreaking, decision to leave my love behind in favor of a life that would be marked not by passion and adventure, but simplicity and safety. In the end, those are the only things I was concerned about when I learned of your existence.

It wasn't long after I'd returned from Italy that I began experiencing the tell-tale signs that another being was growing inside me. By the time I met your father, I had realized-though I hadn't yet taken a test to confirm my suspicions-that I was now responsible for a life outside my own.

I knew that your father's character was irreproachable-that he would take care of you to the very best of his ability for the rest of his life. I also knew that there was no chance I'd ever go back to Italy-whatever we had at the time, our love couldn't surpass circumstance.

While my letters from that time express immense regret, I'm now confident that I did the right thing for you. Your father-the one who cared for you from the time you were born until his sudden, devastating end-loved you more than you will ever know.

When he found out I was pregnant, both of us in our last semesters of college, he was understandably bewildered for a time. That momentary surprise, though, gave way to an excitement that proved his innate goodness. If ever I regretted leaving Italy, that grief diminished with time and seeing your father's adoration for you. You were his-and our-greatest love and accomplishment.

My dear, sweet girl-I wish I could hold you right now in your pain. The only fear I have of leaving this world is that I won't be able to be a part of the rest of your life, to hold the babies that will captivate your heart as you did mine and help see them forward into the unknown.

Please, please know-I never took these decisions lightly. I only wanted the very best for you, whatever that meant for me. And, of course, my life was no hardship-your father loved me well. He loved me through the good and the bad and his own premature passing. He loved me through the times that I questioned my youthful wisdom in leaving Italy. He loved me through you.

My only hope in this time is that you'll understand the decisions I made with the choices I was given-the time I grew up in was a different era, constrained by class and wealth and tradition. If anything, the result was predetermined at my own birth.

If you take anything from this letter, let it be this-you were loved. Oh, how you were loved. Your father and I adored you long past what was considered "reasonable" for the time. We never wanted anything but the very best for you.

I think that he always wondered, though-was he really the one responsible for this wonderous being? Was it his genes that made up the marvel, the dark hair and eyes that were so beautifully you? Whatever his unspoken suspicions, he was definitive in his love for you.

Despite all of that, though, I did once know a love so strong that the very imagination of it seemed preposterous. I met him when I was in my last semester before graduation, when I studied literature abroad in Italy.

He worked at his grandparents' bookstore, where I'd gone to find a specific work for an assignment. Despite the customary tales of "love at first sight," this was decidedly not that. When I came in that autumn afternoon, he tried to argue the merits of his favorite Italian authors over my beloved English and American ones. The initial spark between us was contentious more than passionate.

When I got back to my small but charming appartamento that evening, I realized that he had had left a card with his phone number inside the book with a note on the back that read, "Call me if you want to discuss our mutual distrust of international authors again."

I'm not even sure if the bookstore of his family's legacy still exists, in the wake of digitalization and attention spans that seem to be constrained to short, mindless videos. I'll never forget, though, the passion I felt in those months before I returned to my banal existence.

Before you think I'm rambling about some random love lost decades ago, dear, know that there's a purpose behind this story. I always knew that I wanted you to know about your biological father, even if only in my own death. I simply didn't want to disrupt the everyday, practical existence of our lives in such a way that would cause undue pain for anyone involved.

On that note, or more literally, within these love notes, I've left you a key to a safety deposit box that contains the money I inherited in my own parents' passing-about $20,000 in today's money-so that you can trace the history of your own biological path, if you so choose.

In the end, it doesn't matter what you decide to use the money for, because it's yours all the same. Buy a tiki bar on an isolated, rural road in Arizona, for all I care about its destiny. But I do believe that your father-if, of course, he has outlived me-would want to see his own eyes reflected in your beautiful face and know that our story turned out okay after all.

-With love, M.

She sat there for a moment, overwhelmed into inaction. Her father-the man she'd cherished for almost 18 years of her own journey-died not knowing with any certainty that she wasn't his biological daughter. A man in Italy, unknown to her until this very point in time, held the secret to her genetic fate-and the story of the complicated woman she'd called "mom" for so long.

As she closed the notebook, she couldn't help but wonder at the sudden change in direction her life had just taken. She was all at once more sure of her own forbearance than ever and questioning of the path she felt she was now destined to take.

After all, what-or who-determines who and what we become?

She replaced the key-for now-in the envelope containing the letter that foretold of the existence of a man who may or may not be living a similarly questioning life thousands of miles away, forever frozen in the form of letters unsent.