Wedding anniversaries

Today is the wedding anniversary of both my parents (34 years), and my sister and brother in law (9 years). It was also my brother and sister in law's wedding anniversary last week (7 years). These occasions seem a good excuse to quote excerpts from John and Abigail Adams’ letters to each other. John and Abigail's love story is one of the greatest of American history. Their letters are a tribute to a deep love which weathered many separations, heartbreak, and hard providences.

Abigail to John:

When John Adams was the first Vice President of the United States:

“Years subdue the ardor of passion but in lieu thereof friendship and affection deep-rooted subsists which defies the ravages of time.”

Four years later:

“The cold has been more severe than I can ever before recollect. It has frozen the ink in my pen, and chilled the blood in my veins, but not the warmth of my affection for him whom my heart beats with unabated ardor through all the changes and vicissitudes of life.”

John to Abigail:

When they were courting:

“My soul and body have both been thrown into disorder by your absence”

As a representative of Massachusetts in Europe:

“I want to hear you think, or to see your thoughts . . . You bid me burn your letters [due to the danger of enemies finding them and using them against him], but I must forget you first.”

He wrote in another letter that in all his disappointments and perplexities “nothing has contributed so much to support my mind as the choice blessing of a wife.”

As Vice President:

“I must go to you or you must come to me. I cannot live without you.