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Real Families, Real FUN: Just For Parents
The Love Letter
By Jessica Blau for Real Families, Real Fun

Putting pen to paper to say "I love you" is both a lot harder (do you have to sound poetic?) and a lot easier (no, you don't have to sound poetic) than it seems. It's also a surprisingly powerful way to express feelings that makes both the reader and the writer understand what those three little words really mean. Don't know where to begin? First, close your eyes, meditate, and listen to all the ways and reasons you love the people you love.

Now, write down every little thing that came to mind during your moment of meditation. Read over what you've written, pick out a few of the most poignant, meaningful, or even humorous things that inspire your love and write them out into a letter. Keep in mind: You don't have to be writing to a spouse. A "love letter" can be to a parent, a child, sibling, or friend. And if you feel uncomfortable sending it now, you can always save it for a special occasion-just writing down your feelings can be a gift to yourself.

Here are some tips to help you along:

1. Write with a pen and paper. In this age of email and fax, the typed word has become as common and effortless as a phone call. When you hand-write a letter, you put yourself on the paper through your particular slant of script, the paper you've chosen, the color pen you've used. A Baltimore mother whose ten-year-old daughter spends her summers with her father recently wrote her daughter a love letter on black paper using multi-colored glow markers. "I wrote with the colors of the rainbow," she explained, "because I wanted the letter to reflect how I see her: colorful, joyous, and a font of good luck for all who meet her."
   
   
2. Use your own voice. If you write in the same way you speak, the letter will sound like it's coming directly from your heart. A change of language or too-formal diction will make the letter seem as if a stranger wrote it. You want the reader to hear your voice saying your words.
   
   
3. Be specific. Don't tell your husband that you love that he helps out around the house. Tell him that you love that he is willing to take the trash out when it's ten degrees below zero, the snow is up to his knees, and he's wearing only his pajama bottoms, a fleecy Gap vest, and your pink, fuzzy slippers which were sitting by the back door. Tell your daughter that some of the happiest moments in your life are when you're in the kitchen doing the dinner dishes while listening to her practice piano, the familiar notes of Für Elise wafting through the air and over again.
   
   
4. Don't worry about being romantic. Your goal isn't to romance your spouse or children, your goal is to express to them directly and simply how much and why you love them. If poetic or florid images come to mind, feel free to use them, but make sure the reader will get them. In one of e.e. cummings's most beautiful love poems he wrote, "no one, not even the rain, has such small hands." They are compelling words, indeed, but few eight-year olds (let alone a thirty-eight-year old!) could sense the meaning there.

You'll most likely find that the act of writing a love letter intensifies the very emotions you wished to express. What better way to remind yourself, and your beloved, just how lucky you are to have each other!

TAKE IT FROM ME:
In the hustle-bustle of life with kids you often forget the person you are married to. I think it is important to reaffirm your love. --Alison Kreuch


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