[This is a reply to a card sent to me last February.  Clarifications have been put in parentheses.  Names and locations have been blocked out to maintain anonymity.  Do not e-mail me to ask who this person is.  For that person, I'm just glad to finally say how much it (and you) had meant to me at that point in time.]

Feburary 10-11, 2004

Dearest ___________,

I received this letter exactly one year ago.  It was a rainy day and I had just returned from SMC (Santa Monica College), sopping wet and straight of the Carson Circuit (bus), a rare alternative to my 3-hour commute via public transportation, but an alternative nevertheless.  I did not remember much after that, but I do know that I had passed this final day of my SMC week without much of a care in the world.  I was melancholy that day, like every other day there.  Nothing to expect, nothing to be expected of me...just that I had home in a timely fashion.

I often looked to the mailbox as my only salvation from the physical can of this house.  Every day I would put my backpack down, pull out my self-made set of keys that I had collected from stray sets lying around the house, and go out the back door to collect my potentially golden acceptance letters to 4-year institutions from the steel nest that faced the street.  Usually, I would come back with clothing ads or an offer to attend a particular University of Phoenix via telegraph communication.  But there was something at a different direction of postal solicitation.

The cold wind nipped at my knuckles as I inserted the mailbox key and turned it clockwise.  A clump of white yolks, I thought, grabbing the set.  I closed the door of the box and turned back to the corridor.  While walking back, I flipped through the pointless letters, most of them, if not all, not for me.  Until, I came across a smaller one...

The card-sized envelope was slightly altered due to the condensation inside of the mailbox, but the return address was legible.  Handwritten, it was sent from a particular "_______" from "_____ ________."

I felt my heart burst out of my chest and hit the rain-swept floor.  I looked at the envelope again.  Sure enough, it was from him and it was for me.

I rushed into my office scrounging for a letter opener.  After a one-sided struggle, I managed to open it.  And I read.  And read some more.  And wiped a few tears.  And read some more.  I ran my fingers across the card and felt the grooves of the ball pen that dug the precious words into the folded cardstock.

I didn't feel the same after that.  It uplifted my spirit, and for the few minutes that I contemplated that card, I felt a love that I had only dreamt of in my loneliness.  It was as if he reached across thousands of miles to reassure me that everything was going to be okay.  Life will progress, I would conquer my own internal war, and through him, I had the love of a true friend always with me.  And so it did come to pass.  I made it through the storm and achieved my place at USC.  As for him, he is still succeeding at ________ University and resisting the foes that inhibit his straight path.

A year has passed, and that card still strikes me as strongly as it did that particular February of 2003.  I don't expect another card for this week of Valentine's - a very ironic time for such a noble gesture - but (if it did) it would have me reeling all over again.

But for you, my light, I thank you for all you have been to me.  You have helped me see the stars in the darkest moments of my days.  I will answer the call to stand in the midst off trial; to be strong, courageous and enduring.  You have reaffirmed in me to let my own light shine.  I pray that you have kept your own promises to remain stalwart and fight for your dreams.  And so this Valentine's Day, although this isn't a card, I wish you the same love that keeps me here waiting for you to return safely.  Perhaps someday you'll read this or perhaps you won't.  But wherever these words take me, may they only reaffirm one thing:

I have a friend that does not fade with the passage of time zones or the darkness of the setting sun.

May this Valentine's Day remind us all that any form of love knows no distance, for it is the loyalty, faith, and protection that watches over us every time we ask (or not ask) for it.

I send my love to you, wherever you are.  May it warm you as the rising sun, and may the stars keep your path always lit. 

With much faith in you,
Christine

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