Anchored in Love

My dad wrote handwritten letters to my mom.

My dad was in the Marines. He stayed on board for 6 months every year. While off-shore, he used to write a letter to my mom every week, telling her how much he missed her, what his week had been like, and what he shopped when anchored in other countries. All the letters had cute doodles, his signature, and sometimes a flower.

The 6 months when he was home, we went on endless road trips every other week. We had house parties, shopping, mom-dad's date nights, motorbike rides, cooking together, bringing home flowers, hugs and kisses and the love you could never imagine.

It's not something you see in a hallmark Bollywood romance, it's not even out of a book, my father was a man that not even women could write. Dad had put all classic romantics to shame and how flawlessly he did so.

This is the only kind of love I have ever known, this is the kind of love I never saw again. Witnessing what this generation has to offer, including me, is heartbreaking. Imagine how we've come from a generation of pure, serene love and turned into such reckless, cold people, seeking something we couldn't possibly offer. How someone could have a love so strong that you don't see or hear a person for months and still only think of them, we really can't pull that off anymore. And now, we lay here stargazing with a superficial understanding of what true love is, the kind of love that has you writing love letters to someone. In the middle of shrinking the universe with digital spaces, we shrunk the meaning of love to emojis.

But, for one, I have only known the kind of love my mom and dad shared. Now that I've settled for the opposite all my life, I wonder if that love like that still exists. If there's a love so strong, so reckless, so consistent. The love that doesn't doesn't have you doubting, just utter peace. I never see it anymore, but how wonderful it would be if for once I could be the poem, not the poet.