1

Among the reasons I chose the title Dream Dancing is my instinctual affection for dancing in the kitchen. A type of lover's pursuit that is as much a part of being human as sleeping or walking. It is a universally shared experience. Every culture since time began has refined some variation of a waltz in the place where heart and hearth intertwine. Who hasn't felt the rapture of warm hands wrapping around them to embrace an impromptu romance while the music plays in three-quarter time? Blissful is the soul whose glance has been invited to stay and play. For as lone creatures in a swirling world we love having adoring eyes close and swaying bodies even closer. Music and motion carries us away to shelter. That is, until recently at the turn of yet another century when the world is again so full of change. In a time of hurry and scurry have we abandoned or merely forgotten our need for personal peace? How odd that modern convenience makes us feel comfortable yet leaves us so emotionally comfortless.

2

Another reason I enjoy the title is for what I feel is a duty owed to a second and nearly forgotten passion: the handwritten love letter. How many daydream hours have flown by remembering the excitement of seeing "the" envelope with the rest of the mail. Today's e-mail Romeo notwithstanding, it is the sight of the sender's unique cursive or perhaps the pictographic doodles artistically placed in the margins that captures the wistful heart. Have we come to rely so greatly on the clicking of an electronic gadget or at best the mere signing of a hurriedly chosen greeting card that we are hiding our own singular identity? Who is sending their love today? How do I know it is you who is sending me love? Where is your signature so that I might peruse its emotional swirl so longingly until I am convinced it is you and no other?

3

And what of fate? Where do the webs of happenstance and coincidence find a crossing path, which lands smack in the middle of our lives? Thankfully, even in the days of inconvenient convenience we are not so lost as to dismiss out of hand the small events of solemn amazement, which can surprises us at any moment. A small but perceptible smile can still make it's way to the surface of a sleeping face when we've had one of those days where everything falls our way.

4

One day, quite by accident, I discover a bundle of seemingly unremarkable letters while browsing a small antique store in the Fells Point section of Baltimore. A quick count would reveal a packet of forty-three faded exchanges. That night I began to read. I read two letters each night for over three weeks. To my amazed delight, what I had discovered at the conclusion was not just a packet of rambling correspondence between friends. Rather, I had the good fortune of having played out before me one of the most beautiful love stories I had ever read, heard or was myself a part. I grinned; I laughed; I puzzled and I cried. With each letter my smiles emerged to wonder aloud just who were these two long distant lovers into whose lost world I had walked? After several months of calling, talking, and reminiscing with anyone who would teach me what life was like in the teen years of this century, I have uncovered a portrait of a romantic, yet tenuous young love. A love that has been silent for many years. A love that was blooming amidst the uncertain backdrop of a rapidly changing America. Not unlike 1999, the years just after the turn of the nineteenth century were fast paced as well. Transition was constant and uncertain. By 1915 the U.S. had over four million automobiles and was beginning to take over one hundred lives a year in traffic accidents. War in Europe was threatening to tear the very fabric of the country's security and collective conscious. The second decade has a familiar drone. It had its triumphs and its failures, its winners and its losers, it's promises and its fallen heroes. But most of all it had its own universal fear of a rapidly changing world.

5

Written between 1914 and 1916 the letters chronicle the live's of two inexperienced and untainted lovers. He was the ambitious city boy from sprawling busy Philadelphia and she was the quiet country girl from the tiny farm town of Sykesville, Maryland. What drew me into their world was not just the innocence of true love. For it certainly is that. Nor is it the suspense of wondering what will happen next with each passing letter. They did not disappoint me. What captivated me was the depth of human understanding a young man and young woman of very different upbringing could display during the uncertain days just before a World War. Although he wrote all of the letters, we are allowed to hear from her heart by the questions to which he responds. He answers her tender questions with equally tender answers. Oh, what a writer he was and oh what a story I am happy to tell. I write this story, their story, as accurately as the remoteness of their world will permit. I let the listener draw his or her own conclusions. As it should be.

6

I wrote mostly late at night, which may also play a role in the title. Whether I chose it from the aforementioned Kitchen Prom Dance or writing late nights and into the small hours, what I am certain of is my own internal awaking to the loss of both the dancing and our ability to communicate romantically. With these letters to move you, it is my hope you will experience the opportunity to feel your "humanness" the way every God intends; face to face, pen to pen, and heart to heart.

Ross...