My letter to Alison

Alison sent me an email this afternoon. She says that while things aren't going all that well with her new guy, she thinks I should "spend my efforts meeting women in real life," and "leave her to my imagination."

I sent her this:

Alison,

Can I tell you a story?

In the summer of 1959 -- June 26, 1959, actually -- Queen Elizabeth sailed down the St. Lawrence Seaway to mark the formal opening of the waterway, opening the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. 28 US Navy vessels sailed down the channel with her, and the smaller of them put in at a small harbor on the south shore of Lake Ontario at a place called "Rochester, New York." My father was on one of the smallest vessels, the ARS-8 Preserver, and it put in and held an open house there. A girl barely 16 years old, and her parents, went on a tour of the vessel at Charlotte, and there, the young girl met a gangly 22-year-old electrician's mate from Chicago, Illinois.

That mate was my father... that girl was my mother.

For nearly two years, they wrote each other nearly every day, no matter, where they were... airmail (which was four cents in those days!) and they married in the winter of 1960.

Somehow, without the internet, without long-distance telephone, with an incredible paucity of photographs... they knew they were right for each other.

They gave each other that chance.

Alison, nothing I have ever said to you has been about my imagination.

Real, live women? I've done that, Alison. I've done it many times now. With women I've met in the ether. That includes my ex-wife... I met her through an ad in 1994, through Baltimore City Paper.

Alison, do you really think you're no less real, no less live than anyone else? Gorgeous, smart, thorny, unsure, willing to jump to conclusions? Appealing, quirky, smart as hell... intimidating to 85% of guys? Special... really special?

If I had only ever seen you at Marketplace, or Shoppingtown, I'd wonder about you. For the sake that we've exchanged words, I do wonder more. About many things. The martini we never had at Christmas. What you'd be like on a road trip to the Maine seacoast if I handed off the maps, the GPS and the iPod to you. Whether you snore, or if you drool on your pillowcases in your sleep. Whether your parents would like me. What sort of dog you might choose (like, a basset).

I take every chance in my life, and almost all of them have paid off... chances that have paid off in meeting special, wonderful people. Chances I wouldn't give back for anything.

I wouldn't even be here without two people taking a chance, long before either of us was born. Maybe you wouldn't either... I don't know. Everything I have now comes from more chances -- wonderful chances I've taken in my life that have mostly worked out. There wasn't fantasy about any of it, but a serious understanding about what I knew and what I believed... what I was and what I could be. What I needed, who I wanted to be with, and what I could offer someone who wanted to be with me.

It has worked out wonderfully for me.

But still... if I was as young as my parents were back on that day in the summer of 1959, and if I could be there with them, I'd have asked, "why do any of this if you can't let go and fly?"

They did.

Would you please talk to me?

I would like that.

A lot.