What is Love

For the first time, to my knowledge, my mother was able to put into English, the components of what is love.  It was her uncommon brilliance that produced “Immortal Kisses – Confessions Of a Poet,” and its companion “Songs Of You – A Postscript,” books of poetic jewels that I refer to as “written gold.” Penned by her loving hand, she wrote with passion, and a depth of emotion that could only have evolved from my mother’s extraordinary thought process, naturally evolving from her inordinate intellect into an accomplished work of art.  Sparked by her imagination, and fueled by her unquenchable desire to write, my mother’s creative powers advanced to extraordinary heights.  But not only did she write, she was also telling the story of her love affair with my father from the moment they met, until the day of the inevitable. Throughout the years, my mother never once divulged the meanings behind her poems – and I always believed them to be “just” gorgeous and romantic – poetry that swept me away.  I never realized that there were stories behind them and meanings beneath them.  Eventually in her own way, my mother revealed to me the various people in her life who left indelible marks, and about some of whom she wrote. Additionally, her wondrous romance with nature developed and grew into a finely tuned visual tapestry at our extraordinary home in Brookville, Long Island.  It was here, along with my father, she considered to be the center of her heart – reminiscent of “The Weirs,” – my parents’ famed, fairytale cottage on New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee, where they spent the first week of their sixty year marriage.  And so this, our magical and resplendent home, became my mother’s “Paradise,” having a life-time effect on her psyche – identical to that oft-mentioned and fabled honeymoon, producing her love affair with all of nature’s bounty.In view of all of this, I knew I had to sit down and write a memoir about my mother’s life, as I recall her telling me, so that her poetry would be explained, along with her motivation behind her writing – that was love, and that love was my father David.  He was her “raison d’etre.”                                                                   Pauli Rose Libsohn 3