The Man that Loved Me Chapter 6: Love Letters Across an Ocean

Time in England was never meant to last forever. The war had ended, and with it, the temporary roots they planted in foreign soil. Eventually, my father’s family returned to Italy, to the very village where it all began.

And that is where he met her.

My mother.

They were young—barely teenagers. But even then, something was different about the way they looked at each other. He had returned not as a local boy, but as someone touched by other lands. My mother always said she noticed everything about him—the way he spoke now with a faint accent, the curious way he dressed. He wore knickers and socks the way boys did in England, and the way he carried himself—there was something quietly confident about it. He was unlike anyone else. She said it like a secret she always held close: “He wasn’t like the others. He was already becoming the man he would one day be.”

And so began their love story.

The villagers noticed. Everyone could see it—two young souls who had found each other in the most natural way. But just as quickly as love bloomed, time began to run short again. My father’s path was not yet settled. He was now headed to a new land—America. But before he arrived there, he would first pass through Canada, where many of his cousins had settled.

I don’t remember much about his time in Canada, except the warmth he carried for those cousins. That closeness lasted through my whole childhood, as if no ocean had ever really separated them. The bonds he formed with them weren’t temporary—they were stitched into the fabric of our lives.

But even as he crossed borders, fell in step with new rhythms, and worked toward building a future, one thread never unraveled: HER

They wrote letters.

Long, handwritten letters, sent across the sea like prayers. There were no phones, no quick messages—just ink on paper, and the patient waiting of hearts that knew what they wanted.

Their love grew slowly, reverently, and with deep intention.

And in Italy, everyone watched. They were astonished, truly. Because my mother did what few would: she kept her heart open only for him. Not out of obligation—but out of certainty. Even as others tried to sway her, she waited. She had already chosen him.

And then came the day.

He had become a twenty-year-old man, and she, nineteen. He boarded a ship—this time not as a boy, but as someone returning to claim a promise.

On that ship, surrounded by strangers, he did what he always did: he shared his magic. He performed the tricks he had practiced for years—pulling coins from thin air, children gasp with wide eyes and laughter. But this time, the tricks weren’t just entertainment.

They were love songs.

Because he was on his way back to marry the girl who believed in him from the very beginning.

The magic, it turns out, was never just in his hands.

It was in the way he loved.