Love affair with love letters.

Ottawa, April 6, 1955

My dear,
aaaTime is short. Dr. Shortcliffe says it will be a matter of days, doesn't he? This is not, of course, what he tells me, but what I overheard him saying to you last night, whispering in the corridor, after I was moved to the General. My hearing has remained oddly acute.
aaaMy mind, while less acute, is at ease about financial resources for you and for the children. The house, of course, is secured--for I feel sure you would be reluctant to leave familiar surroundings, particularly your garden--and there are sufficient funds as you know for the children's education.
aaaBut you will want money for travel--why is it we have not traveled, you and I?--and for small luxuries, and it has occurred to me that you might wish to offer for sale my lady's-slipper collection. I am certain it will bring a good price... I expect you will sigh as you read this suggestion, since I know well that Cypripedium is not a genus you admire, particularly the species reginae and acaule. You will remember how we quarreled--our only quarrel as far as I can recall--over the repugnance you felt for the lady's-slipper morphology, its long, gloomy (as you claimed) stem and pouch-shaped lip which you declared to be grotesque. I pointed out, not that I needed to, the lip's functional cunning, that an insect might enter therein easily but escape only with difficulty. Well, so our discussions have run over these many years, my pedagogical voice pressing heavily on all that was light and fanciful. I sigh, myself, setting these words down, mourning the waste of words that passed between us, and the thought of what we might have addressed had we been more forthright--did you ever feel this, my love, my marginal discourse and what it must have displaced?
aaaThe memory of our "lady's-slippers" discussions has, of course, led me into wondering whether you perhaps viewed our marriage in a similar way, as a trap from which there was no easy exit. Between us we have almost never mentioned the word love. I have sometimes wondered whether it was the disparity of our ages that made the word seem foolish, or else something stiff and shy in our natures that forbade its utterance. This I regret. I would like to think that our children will use the word extravagantly, and moreover that they will be open to its forces.
aaaDo you remember the day last October when I experienced my first terrible headache? I found you in the kitchen wearing one of those new and dreadful plastic aprons. You put your arms around me at once and reached up to smooth my temples. I loved you terribly at that moment. The crackling of your apron against my body seemed like an operatic response to the longings which even then I felt. It was like something whispering at us to hurry, to stop wasting time, and I would like to have danced with you through the back door, out into the garden, down the street, over the line of the horizon. Oh, my dear. I thought we would have more time.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaYour loving
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaBarker

From Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries.