February 14, 2011
Dearest Linda,
It has been great fun joining you and Porters here for the weekend. You do such a wonderful job in settings like this. Your help for John is significant and Ann is correct in acknowledging and recognizing it. You have a magic touch with artists that is a delight to observe.
I too enjoy these little run-outs since they do add a lot to the enjoyment of our usual involvements. The real significance is to be seen in how you enhance the enjoyment of everyone else in whatever is happening. Your eye as well as your ability to sum up a situation is really unique and it continues to give me delight to join you in these areas of interest.
I look forward to doing more with the boys with you and to introducing them to some of the fun I have had living with you.
Happy Valentine’s Day
I love you,
Jack
45th Anniversary, 2011
Dear Jack,
I’m so happy that we have hit this mark together, hand in hand, eye to eye, etc.! Together we have become more than one would have been alone, and what an adventure it has been. You have given me the best years of my life – lots of fun, exploration of places and interests, civic engagement, creative people, and most of all, a wonderful family and wonderful family life. I loved your toast at the party, because it caught our deepest values and devotion to our children and grandchildren. They are our true treasures and legacies. And what an opportunity to help shape the next generation. We are so lucky that the boys live so close to us … a daily gift.
That being said (and agreed upon!) let us continue to use our resources to enhance their lives through experiences, lessons, trips and schooling …
… remembering that we must keep ourselves in the best of health to enjoy this last third of our lives.
You had me at “hello” almost 49 years ago at the Willard Hotel and you truly have my heart today.
With love,
Linda
February 14, 2012
Lovely Linda,
I love you and wish you a special Happy Valentine’s Day – you make our life together one big musical. It is a pleasure to dance on and on with you and the boys. With your song writing and producing ability you make us all look good. Your taste, style and creativity give us all a great delight. Thank you again and again.
Love,
Jack
July 19, 2013
Happy Birthday Linda Dear,
The cat and I are sitting here in the library thinking about what a nice house you keep and the pleasures of being with you – most of the time the cat says twitching her tail. Apparently she did not like to have it pulled.
It has been a great pleasure for me to be with you all of these years but now more than ever. We really are becoming like two bookends holding each other up and compensating for the weaknesses of each. I really do look forward to the next five years with you – after that you are more optimistic than I.
It certainly helps to have the grandchildren around and I agree with your idea that we should get ready to sell Gem Lake. That provides a nice target for the next five years, along with traveling, that should keep us pretty busy.
I am really proud of both how good you look and how good you are on the financial issues. It is a delight to know that you are keeping a close watch on my PA finances. Between you and Marge I am in good hands.
I really like this house and what you have done to make it such a jewel box and museum quality place. Your style has always been one of your strengths.
Happy birthday, and Love,
Jack
Christmas 2014
Dear Linda,
I really want to tell you how much I enjoy our life together and how delightful you make it. Initially I want to compliment you for the neatness and simplicity of our home. I say this after having spent time yesterday at Kristen’s and Ranheims. It is really restful to have such a classy but simple and neat home. I will try harder to keep my papers from spoiling the effect.
Your food, of course, is a singular delight of our life together. Again, I really do like the simplicity and heartiness of your soups and salads. It is a pleasure taking your food to work and to friends. Likewise, the vinegar is really a wonderful, personal present. Your natural touch and confidence in the kitchen is a real blessing to me.
Your attention to detail regarding the raising of the grand-boys as well as your attention to detail regarding social courtesies with gifts, birthdays and thank you’s is also a great compliment (and supplement) to my natural disregard of many of those details. I do hope, however, that our two ways of looking at those things may provide some learning of and relief from a too ordered concern about all of those details – it provides some relief for the boys at least.
Our travels while we still can do provide a wonderful opportunity to teach the boys things that they might not learn so soon in their normal life and school. Your laboring hand at setting up and scheduling those trips is essential to their successes. Please keep it up and understand that, even when I am silent, I appreciate all that you do.
Besides all of these indicia of practical contributions that you make to our life and my appreciation of them. I also want to simply say how much I love to be with you, how much I appreciate your help, and how much I admire your beauty, energy and good sense.
You really are an extraordinary thoroughbred – Henry Kaiser and so many others were quite right – you’re are the real winner in the family.
I will try harder to tell you that and that I love you more often and at extra times. I will try harder to make you proud of me and my graciousness. I will try harder not to embarrass you with gruffness and boorishness.
I love you and want our last good years together to be pleasant and delightful for you. I pledge to work with you on all of this so that my left neglect does not cause any serious problems.
Love,
Jack
July 19, 2017
Dear Linda,
Happy Birthday on this significant occasion as we get ready for your cancer operation. Needless to say, the surrounding circumstances give this birthday more gravity than just any other b’day.
I am very proud of how you have dealt with the cancer scare in such a mature, matter of fact, and unemotional way. I am really proud of you. This really demonstrates a maturity of judgment and emotional control that is very becoming – to say nothing of being easy on the rest of us.
I agree entirely with your decision on treatment and am happy to support you 100% as you go through the process – even though it may be at least uncomfortable if not painful. I know you will come out OK because your attitude is so good.
We all look forward to a quick recovery and the reappearance of the Linda we all know and love. We (I) need your help connecting and empathizing and don’t want to lose you. We have a lot more good years together than I ever expected. Let’s do it up grand -especially with the boys.
Love,
Jack
July 20, 2019
Dear Linda,
This is my somewhat belated thank you and Happy Birthday for almost 55 years of life with you as a highlight. It has been great fun, especially in the last 15 years. I focus on the more recent times since the old years are not necessarily always the happiest.
I think we really are having a quite wonderful period of semi-retirement and I give you major credit for that. The house and garden are really quite extraordinary, and I see your wonderful hand and eye in everything around me. Your sense of taste has always been a hallmark of our life together and I really appreciate it since my own sense of taste is not as refined.
I am sorry to hear about your problem with your brother but urge you to move on since I think that there is little you can do about such long-festering insecurity on his part. I definitely think that you should not use his memory and recitation of what Claire and possibly others may have said about you as a reason to cut her off or even show any coolness to her. I am sure she would be shocked and alarmed if she knew that she had been made an unwitting accomplice of Steve’s libel.
I think you are generous, sometimes to a fault, with others in ways that foster generosity in me that I might not otherwise express as openly. Your receptiveness to others’ problems gets us involved in helping to solve those problems in a way that is rare to most people. It is why you have received such nice birthday wishes from all over.
I am sorry that I am constitutionally unable to show such warm affection for you and all you have done for me over the years. My personality shortfalls to those closest to me have continued ever since Paula Ripple’s warning when I was in high school. I would like to be warmer and more physically affectionate to you, but I don’t think that my genes will allow it. I will try, however.
I particularly appreciate your attention to the details of our finances and our health (even though I do not think that my health is in as precarious a state as you sometimes fear). As we get closer to the end, however, I hope you will cooperate in my desire to take my long cruise when the time comes. I am happy that my assessment litigation activities are helping to keep me mentally sharp for the time being. Without that activity I feel my “right-neglect” would only get worse.
I hope that some of my more laissez-faire approach to problems and conflicts can rub off a little more on you—not everything has to be addressed with your typical heightened attention and concern. We can both learn from each other, and we do. Let’s not let out different approaches be seen as a problem—they represent a moderation of each of our extremes.
Thus I am both jocularly appreciative of your gentle interventions with Brad in a way that I could and would never do. But I acknowledge your effectiveness.
I hope at the same time that you will see in my approach to problems like relatives with your brother as an alternative and possibly better way to deal (or not) with him.
We have had and certainly now have a wonderful life together. We complement each other nicely. We have another good ten years in front of us and we should really enjoy it. Thank you for all you have done to make this the case. I love you.
Jack