The way we were & a love ongoing

WHEN LAVETA caught me in her smoldering stare for the first time, we fell in love. I still see those memories in her eyes.

Those eyes take me back to a time before children and bills, before heartbreaks and disappointments, before triumphs and tears, before books and columns. Those eyes - like honey sparkling in the midday sun - return me to a time when we believed love could survive anything.

And, indeed, love has done just that.

Some years ago, LaVeta printed out the proof of love's endurance and placed it beneath her nightstand. There, in a stack of emails 100 pages thick, is the evidence of just how deeply we fell for one another, back when we were drunk in love.

Our first date was July 5, 1997. I was 29 and she was 30.

We were both in college and living with our parents. LaVeta had spent most of her life in church. I'd spent too much of mine in the street. We were both looking for something that went far beyond the physical, and what we found in each other opened windows to our very souls.

I looked back through those memories as I read those old emails a few days ago. What I saw was a time before texts and smartphones; a time when my life was music, and LaVeta was the lyric to every song.

"When will I see you again?" was a common refrain. It's what she wrote to me late in the afternoon on Jan. 25, 1999.

Three hours later, I responded.

"When the moon hangs high above the rooftops and the winter chill sweeps across the night sky, I will appear on your doorstep with . . . a gentle kiss to press upon your lips. Tonight, my love."

And that night, we saw each other, and held each other, and basked in the light of a love we didn't know was possible.

There was something spiritual about our feelings for one another. Something that let us know God himself had brought us together. I'd never felt that way before, so I wrote things to her that I would have been afraid to write to any other woman. She wrote things to me that made me know she was worth everything I had to give.

Like this note from Sept. 9, 1998:

"As I was walking through campus today my mind was filled with thoughts of you. I longed for your presence as I envisioned your smile, your smooth dark skin and your meticulous personal style. I imagined that you were with me. I imagined that I was showing you off. My thoughts then turned to how special and wonderful our relationship is . . . I look forward to seeing you my love."

And she did see me.

Every day.

But then she graduated from Temple University and left Philadelphia for a job at CBS News in New York. I bought an old Nissan for $900 and drove there every weekend.

On Feb. 10, 2000, a few days before Valentine's Day, I wrote this:

"Please don't think I've forgotten you. I haven't. I couldn't. My every other thought is you - your smile, your eyes, your fragrance, your voice, your touch.

"You are my blessing; the ripe, sweet fruit of my faith. You are the substance of the things I've always hoped for, the evidence of God's love - a love I have only to look at you to see.

"If I can bring you even a fraction of the joy you bring to me, our lives will be filled to bursting, and we'll live out our days wrapped up in one another. I miss you so much."

We were married five months later, and in 15 years, our love has changed and matured. But there is one thing that remains the same. No matter how hard I try, I still can't contain the way I feel.