So she wrote me this, a complete eternity ago, on the back of a “To Get List” Notes page:
Dear Bull,
I love you. You are my sun, moon and stars.You are the air that I breathe. When I’m with you I feel higher than any drug could ever make me feel. I will love you for all eternity. No man will ever take your place in my heart. which means I will never love another because you fill every inch of my heart.
Love,
Your Babee
So I now belatedly but necessarily write her back:
Dear Babee,
I love you too. But let’s face it. When you wrote me this billet-doux, you were far less worldly than now, and I seemed to you far more magnificent than I now am. I gave you a very large piece of my very small heart, and it must have been enough to shake that wonderful woman-child you were then loose of the cultural tethers that constrained you.
I am an alpha male, and I was your alpha, the beginning of your life as a free, sentient being; as a remarkable and talented woman unafraid of the world, willing to venture where the gods are unknown, and where will itself is the most powerful agent of intellect. You have eclipsed me in so many ways, and yet somehow you feel trapped in some vestige of your earlier state, bound by some undeserved loyalty to me, some anachronistic affection that constrains your movement.
I set you loose to be the best Babee you can be. I treasure your love, but I am no longer the center of your solar system, I am no longer the sun, no longer the moon, certainly not a star. I was, at best, a comet that disrupted a boring life, that illuminated your dark night sky. You are brilliant now, you glow from the light of many who are led by your wit and intellect to shine upon your heart and your soul.
Oh how I want it to be as it was, but it never was as I wished it to be. I failed you in so many ways, until you stop counting on me. I drove you out into the light and look at you now! The eternity of love you promised has passed, you are free. Never feel pressure, never say that I cause you to feel pressured, say instead, “Your time has passed, old fool. I owe you nothing but the memories of the past you cherish, they will warm a comet until it melts, and I will think only of you as a vapor that passed my way, for a brief freeing fling, when I was becoming what you knew I would be.”
Babee, you kill me. Go, be free!