My Little Red Book of True Love

My Little Red Book of True Love

It was on the night before my wedding day. My mother called me upstairs, to her bedroom. She was trying to hide her tears from me. But, I could still notice the traces of the trickles from the tails of her big brown eyes down to her rosy cheeks.

She brought out a book from the chest she always kept locked under her bed. It was a small red book.
“Take it,” she said below her breath. ‘It’s yours now.”
I accepted it. I held it with my hands and looked at it anxiously and curiously.
She couldn’t give me her diary.
“It was my wedding gift. My mother gave it to me. Her mother had given it to her. She said it was a gift from Jerusalem,” my mother said with her right hand placed on the cover of the book and her left hand placed on my left wrist. “This is my treasure of love without measure for you. Treasure it with your heart and soul.”
I was gazing at her. I was speechless. But not breathless. My heart was throbbing as I was sobbing. My tears came in trickles. Trickles of the ripples in my heart. Trickling down to my cheeks. And my mother embraced me.
“Oh, mama. Oh, mama. Oh, mama.”
“I love you,” I whispered and held her tightly.
She said, “Read the book.”
I opened the book.
“It is a book of secrets. Secrets of the heart. Secrets wrapped in small words. Small words coated with pigments of colours of the most precious moments of our most sacred feelings. Feelings too pure and true to be expressed in ordinary words.Words painted in colour. In beautiful and wonderful colours of the pleasures of falling in love. First with your creator, with yourself and then with your husband and children. Like the colours of the rainbow.”
I have never stopped reading the book and my husband loved it. And we have shared the joys of this book with others.

Even our children loved this book. They would rush to my bedside and whisper, "Mummy. Are you going to read your little red book again?”
I always nodded in consent. Because, I have always believed that there are no greater joys to share than the joys of true love as I have discovered in this book you are holding and reading right now. You will enjoy every word of the verse and the prose in this my little red book of true love.