I Face My Love

After a beautiful night spent with his wife of 24 years in Victoria, British Columbia, as dawn filters into their motel room, a man wakes with a start, feeling words flowing into him: the beginning of a book he promised to her long ago. He goes to the desk and begins writing in the dim light; but almost immediately the pen runs out. Not wanting to wake her by noisily searching for another pen, he gets back into bed, and lies awake for hours, thinking about what the book will be. Months later, on her birthday, he begins again, gathering all the old hand-written books he'd given to her during their courtship, and he writes the new book's prologue. Over the next nine months, he selects and arranges the old materials into a story of the sad man he was before she found him, the transformation her love brought about, and celebration of their wedding day and early wedded life. The night before their twenty-fifth anniversary, he meditates on their life together, their wondrous beginning, the years of sacrifice as they raised their children, promises he didn't keep, their life today, his hopes for renewal—but most of all: the endless beauty and strength of her love. Early the next morning, he presents the book to her: “I Face My Love.”