Romeo and Juliet.
Antony and Cleopatra.
Bogie and Bacall.
Isabella and Albert.
The incredible love story of Isabella and Albert began 10 years ago in the Philippines. She was 14; he was 16.
They never met, they never spoke, but every day they saw each other as Albert walked by Isabella`s Catholic school on the way to his own. Sometimes they`d murmur ”Hi.” Isabella was friendly with Albert`s brother, and he suggested that the two shy teenagers begin writing to each other. So they did. Soon after, Albert left Manilla and went away to college. The letters continued, about one a week, and gradually Isabella and Albert began expressing their feelings to each other. They wrote about getting married, and each pledged to be faithful.
Still, they never met and they never spoke.
When Isabella was 16, she moved to California with her family. She and Albert kept writing. They still never met. They still never spoke. But they still wrote about getting married and having a family together.
Five years after the correspondence began, when she was 19 and he was 21, Isabella went off to college. That was when she decided that she and Albert should begin ”seeing” other people. Isabella`s letters to Albert grew less frequent.
When Albert called her-one of two telephone conversations they ever had-she couldn`t answer him when he asked, ”Do you still love me?” And when he proposed, Isabella couldn`t say yes.
Finally, Isabella`s letters stopped completely for three years.
”I was beginning to realize it was just letters,” Isabella said. ”You have to be face to face to have a relationship.” Albert wrote again and again, begging her to explain herself. In his last letter, he said he would look for someone else. Isabella went on to date several men in California. In fact, she was supposed to marry one of them. But something kept getting in the way of her feelings for him. Isabella began to wonder if maybe it was Albert. So more than three years after she stopped writing him, and almost 10 years after she started, Isabella, now 24, decided to go back to the Philippines to see Albert. She wrote him and told him she was coming. Two days before her departure she received a letter back. He wrote: ”I will always love you, even if I am married.”
Isabella went anyway, not knowing if Albert was or was not married. She arrived in Manila and transferred to a flight to Albert`s town. He was waiting for her at the airport.
”I just stared at him,” Isabella said. ”I couldn`t say anything.”
They spent four days together. Albert forgave her the long silence. In person, everything was the way it always had been in their letters. Except one thing: Albert was engaged to be married. It was an old-fashioned Philippine engagement: He had been ”matched” and was under legal contract. He had to get married, he said. And there is no divorce in the Philippines.
”Albert kept saying, `Why did you come back now?”` Isabella said.
But when Isabella left to return to California, after seeing Albert for the first four days ever in their relationship, she did so with the conviction that they would find a way to be together.
Isabella returned home and broke up with her boyfriend. Albert was married a month after their visit, but right now he is in Hong Kong, trying to get a legal divorce. Isabella is applying for papers to bring him to this country. Does she worry that they are acting foolishly, based on only four days?
”It`s based on 10 years,” she corrected. ”No one can say for sure what is waiting for us in the future. . .. But because I love him so much, I chose to wait.”
What happens when you finally take that romantic vacation? Send the tales, along with your name, address and phone numbers to Lavin & Kavesh, Tales from the Front, Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.
