“DEAR JOHN”

I bet many of us have forgotten how it felt to draft a hand-written love letter. When we took our time to think of words to express how we felt about that special someone; borrowed words from songs, from famous poets and unbelievable for the Christian part of us borrowed words from the book of Solomon. Generation may have changed and people hardly know their hand-writing in this era of computers. A boy no longer tells a girl how magical she makes him feel and neither does a girl hide under covers with a spotlight to read the note from the boy she likes. Gone are the days when we could open up and speak what’s in our hearts.

I still recall my first love letter and even though I may not remember the words I wrote and received in reply, the nostalgia lives on. No offense to the men who have courted me but none of them took a pen and drafted those emotions of a first meeting, those nights when we stayed a wake in passionate entanglement. I don’t blame them since I didn’t do the same either. I never let them know on the missed heartbeats of our first kiss, or the longing for the first hug. My pen has not written of my heart’s rush when I first caught a glimpse of their masculine structure through the unbuttoned shirt.

SMS and emails may have replaced what was a tradition but for those who waited for the post man to deliver the long awaited letter, those who drew the contours of each letter from their loved ones, read it over and over again never noticing the grammatical errors, I bet you long for those days. Indeed those were the days when we pressed these notes across our chests and fell sound asleep. Boys were not afraid to say what they felt and girls were not afraid to blush at the words of their beloved.

The secret boxes we kept under our beds as a safe haven for our secret notes of passion, desire, longing and feelings that ran deep. I still recall with nostalgia as I waited for the post lady to call my name in front of the assembly of boarding school girls to receive my handwritten note from my puppy love. The words may have been borrowed, simple, but they were what he felt for me. The comfort I had deep inside with the thought of him thinking of me from the distance. His love was in every word he drafted.

Why do I write this today? As you can see my title of blog, “Dear John” a movie that inspired me and took me back in time.. I never wrote “Dear John” but to whomever it was addressed, I drafted every word with love..Gone are the days when I received a love letter, but the nostalgia is awake inside of me tonight..

Are you nostalgic tonight too? Let your pen draft those words to your beloved, pour out your heart and let the ink inscribe what you feel for that special someone. Valentines’ day is around the corner.