Love letters...

The first one I ever wrote was in 1st grade! It was to Mr. Andrews- my 1st grade teacher. He was a Brit. He had green eyes. I have a weakness for green eyed men! He was so elegant. He always wore crisp collared Oxford shirts with a tie and he smelled so good- like freshness I remember telling my mom. "Mr. Andrews smells like freshness".

"And what does freshness smell like?" my mother had inquired.

"Freshness smells like pine trees and mornings!" I had replied.

I am still reminded of that descriptor by my mom. On occasion she will tell me about that simile that I had come up with. Freshness smells like pine trees and mornings.

So Mr. Andrews always smelled of pine trees and mornings. He had beautiful shiny white teeth. A mouthful of the straightest ones. And he smiled a lot. His shoes were always equally shiny. That is my other weakness- sharply dressed men!

So I listened enraptured, as Mr. Andrews would read from the "Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" and I was enchanted. I would make it a point to sit on the chair next to him and then I would enjoy the morning smell of him all day long. Mr Andrews always brought a Crunchie bar for an after lunch treat. (Crunchies are a yummy chocolate. It is a British brand and comes in golden wrapping paper). He would always slip it into my book bag with a wink and I enjoyed nibbling on it at the end of the day while I watched my brother play football (and it is football NOT soccer!!) and waited for the ride back home.

I wrote him a love letter one night before bed. It went like this,

Dear Mr. Andews

I love yu. You smel nis. I lik yur shus. They ar shiny. I lik yur smily tith.
I love yu very mush.

from
shahnaz

I colored red hearts on it and lots of suns and rainbows. And then I sneaked out of my room and peeped over the staircase. I could hear Frank Sinatra lilting in the hallway. After putting us to bed, my parents always danced to Frank's tunes in the kitchen. I peeked over the bannister and saw them swaying to the music in each other's arms. My dad is a great dancer and he held her close with his hand against my mom's back.(My brother and I would sneak out of our beds often and sit and giggle on the stairs as we watched them dance in the kitchen, unaware that we were spying on them).

I tippy toed into my mother's room to borrow her Estee Lauder Opium and sprayed some on my letter. It made an oily patch! I was a little horrified so I returned to my room and colored the whole patch red. And then it had an oily red patch on it! Sigh....

I went to bed and gave it to Mr. Andrews in the morning anyway. I was very excited as I handed it to him. He opened it and read it and he smiled. Then he looked at me and smiled again.

"Smell it." I told him. "It smells nice!"

He obliged. "It does smell nice." he said and then he put it in his pocket.

I was on cloud nine!

On parent-teacher meeting day while I squirmed about on my bright red plastic chair and my parents tried to keep their long legs in some semblance of dignity on matching blue and yellow ones as we sat with Mr. Andrews, he pulled out my letter.... with the red hearts and suns and rainbows and a big red oily patch!

Uh oh! I thought....

"You have quite a literary young lady here. I would encourage her writing even more...." is what that gracious man said. And then he handed me my letter.

I recall wondering what lite...litery(??)....lite(something).... meant. I smelled the letter. It smelled of Mom's Opium... and fresh mornings. I opened it. Mr. Andrews had made corrections. In his neat writing he had corrected my spelling errors in a shiny green gel pen! Mom and Dad peeked over my head. I think my dad chuckled out loud and mom hushed him.

I sighed....and hugged my dad and hid my face in his smell.(He smelled of cigars and aramis... he smelled of comfort.... he smelled of dad).

Mr. Andrews tapped my shoulder and I looked at him. "You write very well. Keep it up!"

He then went on to my other school work and talked with my parents about stuff.... and that was the end of that.

After the weekend as I sheepishly took my seat next to him in the red plastic chair, he gave me a brand new notebook. "To write my ideas in....." is what he said. "Just whatever comes into my head..."

And that is exactly what I have been doing ever since- writing my ideas- just whatever comes into my head!

(My mother still has that letter- by the way!)
(My Dad actually made a slide of it and on family gatherings it was projected onto the white screen in the den, for all assembled, to view the neat green handwriting that corrected my childish pencil scrawls on a background of red hearts and suns and rainbows and a big red oily patch!- The attempt that was my first love letter.
Of course this mortification was interspersed with other mortification's such as a close up shot of my brother and I as toddlers in the bath tub! And shots of me with my foot in my mouth and my bum in the air as I did a tumble and many such..... Oh, and another equally mortifying letter that I had penned as well- but that is a tale for another day!)