Just so you know, there are only two letter to go after this. I really do appreciate all the support I've recieved over the months!

May 12th, 2007

My dearest,

Was I at home yesterday? Or this morning? I feel like I can barely remember it that time flew by so quickly. Seriously I feel like I went from the airport to Rory's graduation to our bed back to the airport in less than 24 hours. It was something like that, I'm sure of it.

I would say it wasn't worth it to go home just for that short time, that it felt like a tease, but I'd be lying. We both know why I couldn't stay for long, there's so much to do before I really come home next week and, in truth, I shouldn't have been leaving right now anyways. But Rory's worth it. The whole thing, it was so worth it.

Every minute of my little girl's life made everything that I went through to have to her and to raise her completely worth it.

As a sixteen year old, holding your newborn in her arms, you wonder what life is going to bring you, the future challenges you're going to have to overcome. I knew I'd just faced a big one – what with giving birth and all at that age. And it was then that I found myself in that big house knowing that the biggest challenge would be for me to raise this child, to teach my little girl how to become a bright and successful woman, and for me to get through one day at a time without screwing up.

And, well, I never managed that last one.

They say you learn more from your mistakes than your successes but I think I've made the same mistake many times, maybe I'm just slower than most. But I was just a child, I'll admit that freely. I know I claimed, at least to Mia, to be all grown up, to be an adult raising my little girl, but it doesn't just happened. The stick turned pink. Rory was born. I left Hartford. That all forced me to think like an adult, but I wasn't grown up, not really. You can't grow up if you haven't had the chance to think like a child and grow from that, to go from thinking that every problem can be solved with an apology to the idea that some problems can never be solved.

I had only reached the level of teen maturity when I first met you. I still lived for rebellion and just making everything in life out to be some kind of game or party. As a teen I thought that nothing was too serious, nothing would really come as a consequence of anything I did. Independence was the name of the game and if I got to close to losing that, I ran. Max certainly learned that.

Somehow all during that, Rory became an adult. She went through Chilton and Yale, she left Yale and broke up with Logan, she went back to Yale, became editor of the Yale Daily News. My little girl, she went so far, she did so much. She still is a bit lost, she's not completely set on what she's going to do now, but she's beautiful and she's smart and she's perfect and now she's a Yale graduate.

Yes, that's right, my daughter graduated from Yale yesterday. Somehow on that long road paved with mistakes, I must have done something right. I screwed up a lot, most than I can say, but I must have done something right.

And that's not to say that I haven't grown up after all, but I don't think my transformation into an adult had anything to with Rory. I think part of it was me, my realization that without her my life must still go on, that after she left and went to Yale, I still have a life to live. I think, with her around, I could feel like life still could be a party every day. Yes, I had to pay taxes and take responsibility for things in my life, but I never let it get too serious.

But I think the moment we packed her and sent her off and my life became my life without her, I had to grow up. I couldn't depend on her to be adult in the relationship anymore

And then I found you and, I don't know, I'm not sure I would have ever become the person I am today if you hadn't kissed me that night at the Dragonfly. You made me want more. You made me want to give up my independence. You made me want to love. Makes me wonder if Wendy had explained to Peter Pan that a kiss is more than a thimble, if he might have given up Never Never Land forever.

Truly I think you can't really be an adult until you're ready for all of that: love, comfort, safety and finding it all in one person. I'm not saying that you have to do it, but you have to be willing. You have to be willing to break down that barrier you keep around yourself and let someone in, even if it's just one person. You have to be able to say you can't do it yourself, to say that your life wouldn't be your life without that person.

For 22 years, I was Rory's mother, and technically I still am, but she doesn't need me to be that anymore. All I want to be is your wife, your heart, the love of your life, forever.

Did you ever see Miss Saigon? Kind of a strange tangent, I know, but go with it for a moment. I haven't actually seen that musical for years so I know we didn't see it together but I seem to recall Nicole taking you to see a few shows in New York when you guys were together so I was just wondering. It's such a heartbreakingly beautiful musical. I know I cried when I saw it, off-Broadway of course. Rory was supposed to go see Annie with her class in school but that was around the time she came down with chicken pox, I know you remember that week, and she didn't end up going. They were supposed to write a paper for music class on their appreciation for musicals so I took Rory to see the Litchfield Community Theater production of Miss Saigon. Not quite the same as having Lea Solanga play the lead, but she was probably preparing to voice Mulan then anyways.

Now it's true that in the end she gives up her life so that her boy can have a better life in America with his father, but it's really a love story. You might say, well Kim and Chris are only really together in about 20 minutes of the entire musical and they never see each other again, how does that make for a love story? (Well you wouldn't say that but someone might.) It's just that in the face of everything, the world seemingly coming apart at the seams, it's each other that Kim and Chris turn to. (Yes, the male lead does have that unfortunate first name, but we'll just stick a pin in that so that I can make my point.) Kim and Chris turned to each other in some of the worst days of the Vietnam War and pledged their love for each other. She vowed that he was her sun and moon and that's what love is. Even though they never really made their way back together, it's what they said that night, what they termed as 'the last night of the world', that means something, that if the world to were to come to an end at that moment, that at least they would be together.

Ah, I had a point to make, give me a moment.

I think I was just thinking about us, about true love. You know as kids people tell us fairytales, the true love's kiss that awakens you, the happily ever afters. No one really lives happily ever after, I think that's what we learn to recognize as adults. But we also realize that the one we love, our one true love, can make it seem like we have. You are my sun and moon and stars and if I never tell you that enough, know that's it's true.

Like Kim, I could give up my life for my children, and I would in a heartbeat, Caleb and Rory are that important to me. But I could never give my life up for you, it just wouldn't be possible. My life is your life as yours is mine. I can't imagine ever untangling the two.

When we had that dinner at our house last night with Rory and Caleb and everyone that we know, Rory gave me a tape she'd been meaning to send me for awhile. Apparently, they decided to kill off Alan Quartermaine on General Hospital. Now that may mean nothing to you but it's so incredibly sad to me. I remember when he joined the show, I remember hiding out in my room after school just to watch the show, to find out who was AJ's father, find out whether Alan was going to tell Monica that Susan was pregnant with Jason. And now he's dead?

I tell ya, I get the killing off Lila Quartermaine thing, I mean the actress that played her, Anna Lee, had died. But killing off Alan? To me, Alan and Monica and the Quartermaines were the soul of the show, unlike Rory who always had a soft spot for Luke (not you, Luke, of course – I mean Luke Spencer).

Thankfully Rory taped the episodes after his death when all the family and everyone on the show came together to mourn. I watched the funeral episode just before I sat down to write this letter and I have to tell you, I cried. Actually, I sobbed. They always do those sequences at the end when they kill off an important character as if they're memorializing their life and more than anything it was the memories of Alan and Monica that got to me.

You know, I remember when he proposed (this first time). Actually, I remember when he proposed every time. And even though they wanted to kill each other sometimes and even divorced once or twice, they still found their way back to each other because they really and truly loved each other.

More than anything else it was the flashback to Monica's breast cancer that got to me. I remember those days. I was working the day shift at the inn by then and I'd managed to stay dusting the same room long enough so I could watch all of General Hospital while doing my work. I wonder what Mia thought when she'd see me coming out of a room with tears in my eyes. But Alan was so wonderful. All though it, he was by her side, he was going through hell just as she was because her life was his life and if it was happening to her then it was happening to him.

There was an episode after her surgery when Monica was depressed over her looks, thinking that Alan didn't want her anymore and she wasn't beautiful anymore, which is so untrue because how could Leslie Charleson ever not be beautiful? They were fighting in their room late one night and finally she just opened her robe and screamed 'this is me, are you telling me you want to go to bed with this?'. And Alan, wonderful Alan, responded 'yes, very much'. Because it was her, not her body, that he loved.

I just can't believe she's going to have to go on without him now. I just feel for her. They been pretty much married for 30 or so years now, how can she even know what it is to live her life without him now?

Luke, you know, I write you some crazy letters sometimes. Well intentioned, but crazy.

When I come home next week, everything's going to change. You know that, right? It's just a short period of time. It's you and me, every day, night after night. And after Caleb grows up and anyone else that happens to come along grows up, it'll really be just us. And we'll argue and we'll fight and we'll have some great times as well, but we need to be prepared.

So I'm just telling you now, for the future, for the next time I screw up, I would never hurt you. I would never do anything that would distance myself from you. I would never want that.

Even if you're having a rough week or I am, and you're trying on my every last nerve and Caleb's working on the word 'no', nothing will be different in what I feel for you. Like my good old friend, Glenn Medeiros, once said, nothing's gonna change my love for you. I don't want you to be anyone else but you and I don't want you to be more than you are or something that you're not. I want you to be you, Luke Danes, my husband, my lover, the love of my life, my best friend, my heart and soul. That's the man I gave my heart to, that's the person sharing my life with me.

Until tomorrow comes,

Lorelai

PS. We should really have that whole kids discussion again soon, shouldn't we?