Dear Reader,
I love when a movie gets me choked up, especially on an airplane. There’s something about being suspended in the sky, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Tears running down my face, a flight attendant pausing to ask if I’m alright, the stranger next to me quietly offering a tissue. It’s a whole scene.
And it happened last night, on my way home to New York City from Seattle.
This time, the culprit was The 35-Year Promise, a moving story about an elderly Japanese man who is illiterate. Shortly after marrying as a young man, his wife writes him a love letter. Too ashamed to admit he can’t read it, he takes the letter, hides in the bedroom…and eats the paper, hoping somehow to understand the words.
Eventually, he confesses. His wife, instead of reacting with anger or disappointment, responds with something far more powerful: understanding. She promises to be his hands, to sign his name, to carry that burden with him for the rest of their lives.
Decades pass.
This is exactly what people write in their letters to me. ;)
At 65, after retiring from his job making sushi, he decides to go back to school to learn how to read and write, with one goal in mind: to write his wife a love letter of his own.
He succeeds.
And her reaction… I won’t spoil it for you. But I will say this: somewhere between 30,000 feet and the beverage cart, I was undone.
The movie reminded me of something we don’t talk about enough: the quiet, enduring power of expressing love in a letter. Not a text. Not a quick “thinking of you,” but something intentional. Something you can hold. Re-read. Return to. Maybe not taste but feel.
A letter says: I took the time.
A letter says: You matter enough for me to slow down.
It made me think about the hundreds of letters I’ve kept over the years; folders filled with words from family, friends, and lovers, dating back to 1978. Some are folded so many times the creases are permanent. Some, the handwriting alone is enough to make me choke up without even reading the words. All of them hold a version of me, seen through someone else’s eyes.
As I’ve been rereading them while working on my next book, I’ve realized something: they are proof that I was loved, missed, thought about long enough for someone to put pen to paper. And that feels like its own kind of love letter.
That’s why this movie hit me so hard. In a world where everything is instant and fleeting, love—real love—asks us to pause. And when we write it down—or read it—we get to stay there a little longer.
With love (and a wad of used tissues in my pocket),
P.S. Who would you write a letter to if you let yourself pause long enough?
SONG OF THE WEEK
Love Letter by Nina Nesbitt
Felice Cohen is an award-winning author, best known for squeezing big ideas into small spaces—like her 90-square-foot NYC apartment (yes, really). Her books include Half In: A Coming-of-Age Memoir of Forbidden Love, 90 Lessons for Living Large in 90 Square Feet, and What Papa Told Me, with praise from legends like Elie Wiesel and Rita Mae Brown. Her viral YouTube tour has racked up over 25 million views—mostly from people wondering where she kept her shoes. More at felicecohen.com.
