The Notebook - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,50

They intrigue me, these letters, for when I sift through them I realize that romance and passion are possible at any age. I see Allie now and know I’ve never loved her more, but as I read the letters, I come to understand that I have always felt the same way.

I read them last three evenings ago, long after I should have been asleep. It was almost two o’clock when I went to the desk and found the stack of letters, thick and tall and weathered. I untied the ribbon, itself almost half a century old, and found the letters her mother had hidden so long ago and those from afterward. A lifetime of letters, letters professing my love, letters from my heart. I glanced through them with a smile on my face, picking and choosing, and finally opened a letter from our first anniversary.

I read an excerpt:

When I see you now—moving slowly with new life growing inside you—I hope you know how much you mean to me, and how special this year has been. No man is more blessed than me, and I love you with all my heart.

I put it aside, sifted through the stack, and found another, this from a cold evening thirty-nine years ago.

Sitting next to you, while our youngest daughter sang off-key in the school Christmas show, I looked at you and saw a pride that comes only to those who feel deeply in their hearts, and I knew that no man could be more lucky than me.

And after our son died, the one who resembled his mother . . . It was the hardest time we ever went through, and the words still ring true today:

In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you, and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry, I cry, and when you hurt, I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods of tears and despair and make it through the potholed streets of life.

I pause for just a moment, remembering him. He was four years old at the time, just a baby. I have lived twenty times as long as he, but if asked, I would have traded my life for his. It is a terrible thing to outlive your child, a tragedy I wish upon no one.

I do my best to keep the tears away, sift through some more to clear my mind, and find the next from our twentieth anniversary, something much easier to think about:

When I see you, my darling, in the morning before showers or in your studio covered with paint with hair matted and tired eyes, I know that you are the most beautiful woman in the world.

They went on, this correspondence of life and love, and I read dozens more, some painful, most heartwarming. By three o’clock I was tired, but I had reached the bottom of the stack. There was one letter remaining, the last one I wrote her, and by then I knew I had to keep going.

I lifted the seal and removed both pages. I put the second page aside and moved the first page into better light and began to read:

My dearest Allie,

The porch is silent except for the sounds that float from the shadows, and for once I am at a loss for words. It is a strange experience for me, for when I think of you and the life we have shared, there is much to remember. A lifetime of memories. But to put it into words? I do not know if I am able. I am not a poet, and yet a poem is needed to fully express the way I feel about you.

So my mind drifts, and I remember thinking about our life together as I made coffee this morning. Kate was there, and so was Jane, and they both became quiet when I walked in the kitchen. I saw they’d been crying, and without a word, I sat myself beside them at the table and held their hands. And do you know what I saw when I looked at them? I saw you from so long ago, the day we said good-bye. They resemble you and how you were then, beautiful and sensitive and wounded with the hurt that comes when something special is taken away. And for a reason I’m not sure I understand, I was inspired to tell them a story.

I called Jeff and David into the kitchen, for they