chase the light

In 1995, in a classroom I was teaching in, I found this postcard late one night. It was in the tray of the chalk board in front of the class. It had actually been there a few days getting moved around. It first caught my eye only because it was a painting from my favorite classical painter William Bouguereau. “The Abduction of Psyche” from 1895. The painting was now a 100 years old. The classes had left awhile ago so it had obviously been left behind. I flipped it over to find a love note from a girl. There was no one in any of the classes that I knew of named either Josh or Naomi. So I’m not sure how it ever decided to land in my hands but I’ve kept it this whole time. I was cleaning out a closet and opened the box that it was in and read it again. I’m not sure how old she was when she wrote it, she could have been a teenager, she could have been in her thirties. All I know is she is 10 years older than she was and I hope she hasn’t changed.

All together now… Awwwww….

“This is a vision of us. What do you think of my dream come true? Isn’t it a little blue? You know what I mean, I hope. Here is that thing I wrote. Hope you enjoy the postcard. I’ve been saving it for someone really special for about a year now and I guess you came my way.

Eternally, Naomi

P.S. I’ll give you the story of Psyche and Cupid sometime.

I’ve been going crazy for almost 6 1/2 minutes and I think the flowers on my pretty dress are falling off too slowly for anyone else but but me to see, but you were pretending oh so well when you said, “why are you crying girl?” and, “sit on my lap, ooh brr, it’s so cold so why don’t you take off your dress little girl?”, but I laughed and said “only the flowers, I’ll take off only the flowers.”
Naomi – November 24, 1995