I always knew that my dad was a romantic, but only in a tightly-focused way.
I’d seen, over the years, the lovingly-worded birthday cards that he gave to mum on her every birthday, but because I also saw him as a hard-working person so dedicated to his job, it never crossed my mind that he was thinking of ‘love’ every day … until I saw the Love Book that he’d been keeping for years.
The book is filled with cartoon cut-outs from his daily newspaper, all with the same theme: ‘Love is …’ … each carefully and neatly glued to a page in the Love Book.
Apparently, he did this every day!
The book itself is a simple scrap-book — one with a multi-coloured cover page that you can see in the main picture above, but with blank pages within the body of the book.
It was on these blank pages that he diligently glued the daily love cartoons.
But there was one page that was different from the rest. The inside cover. The very first thing you see when the book is opened. On this previously blank page, dad had written out the word SENTIMENTAL as a heading and then, underneath it in a vertical formation, he had taken each letter of the word, given it a line of its own, and added his own definition of its meaning:
That page is not a piece of literary brilliance, but it is written from the heart. The heart of my dad.
Here is how the page is set out:
*********** SENTIMENTAL *********
“S’ IS FOR ‘SOMEONE’ WHO MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD,
“E” IS FOR ‘EDEN’, A PARADISE OF LOVE,
“N” IS FOR THE ‘NICE’ THINGS THAT TINGLE YOUR BLOOD,
“T” IS FOR ‘TENDERNESS’ THAT COMES FROM ABOVE.
“I” IS FOR THE ‘INSTANCE’ YOU HOLD SOMEONE TIGHT,
“M” IS FOR ‘MOTHER’, NO OTHER WORD IS RIGHT.
“E” IS FOR ‘EVERYTHING’ YOUR HEART DESIRES,
“N” IS FOR ‘NICE’, THINGS THAT TRUE LOVE REQUIRES.
“T” IS FOR ‘THRILL’ FROM A KISS AND A SMILE,
“A” IS FOR THE ‘APPLE’ EVE OFFERED WITH GUILE.
“L” IS FOR ‘LOVE’ … FOR ‘LAUGHTER’ … FOR ‘LIFE’
Dad signed that page: ‘NEDGO’ … a play on his surname (Ogden), like mine!
. . .
I think that you are now ready to see one of the inside pages of this Love Book, but first, here is a sample of just one of the cartoons that he laboriously glued into the book every day:
And finally, here is a sample page with 12 cartoons per page.
Note the hearts above each cartoon … Dad drew these free-hand, with a red-coloured pen:
So, there you have it … My Dad’s Love Book.
Thank you for reading … Hope you enjoyed the read.
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Note: All Fred’s Story collections can be accessed via ‘Lists’ or Fred’s Story boxes
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This post was previously published on The Happy Human.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean? | My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence |
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Photo credit: Fred: Almost Famous