The Book of Me – Written by You is a weekly blog prompt created by Julie Goucher of the blog Angler’s Rest. This is a fifteen month writing project to highlight my life so that I will have something to leave behind for my descendants. Week twenty five’s prompt is Love.

• Love comes in varying shapes and sizes
  • I love you
  • I love ice cream
  • I love the smell of rain, Spring, toast
  • I love my (insert your family member, pet etc)
• There is no right or wrong way to love….or is there?
• Define what love means to you

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I believe love is un-definable. There are certainly people I love (my family), objects that I love (chocolate comes to mind), things I love to do (another seemingly endless list) and places I love to visit. Do we love these things because they appeal to our senses, in one way or another? Do we love people because they conform (or not conform) to our expectations? How does one put such strong feelings into words? I am certainly not the best writer or poet in the world. Since the dawn of literature, writers have been using words to express how they feel and see the world, and to define love. Artists and craftsmen have been creating masterpieces which appeal to all our senses. Love is an emotion that can be triggered by memories from long ago. It can resurface, evolve and change. In many respects, I believe love defines a person, not the other way around.

Here are some of the things I love that define me.

Christmas Day, 1969

Costume from Merry Wives of Windsor

Deborah, early 1990s

Ballet recital, early 1980s

Me with my ancestor Capt. Finney Leach at Burial Hill, Plymouth.

A view of Lake Winnipesaukee from the shores of Camp Kabeyun

Roscoe with his wife Gladys and their sons, John & Mark (circa July 1942 in Kentland, Indiana)

Assorted letters from my grandparents during the years 1942-1946

All photographs are from the private collection of Deborah Sweeney.

© Deborah Sweeney, 2014.
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2014/03/23/book-of-me-prompt-25-love/