38

Today Mario and I celebrate 38 years of marriage. I've accepted a pretty challenging poetry challenge: write a love poem in the pattern of a love poem classic. I choose Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I love Thee?" An ambitious comparison, but hopefully you'll see parallels. 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

I love the way you smell like lemongrass and taste like peppermints. Or when you're smoking cigars outside in the wind,  the freshness of it makes your face glow. When you come inside, you carry the aroma of a library book, one that keeps getting borrowed, its pages bursting with promise, because it's that good. Sometimes, our shared life has the scent of good cigars or favorite library books, right before the canoe tips over and spills everything into the raging river we're on. Sometimes our shared life is like the morning, when we first wake, then  reach up to the ceiling with a tall stretch, and there's sunlight streaming through the window and daffodils blooming in the garden, and you don't yet notice the mushrooms eating the wooden fence or the rats nesting behind the garden shed. Sometimes our shared life seems so warm  and hopeful until I remember how this world is sometimes cold and unforgiving. When I take  a step back, I  bump into you because you're usually near. I love you because you still enjoy the cigars and the sunshine and when I get up in the morning you say hello beautiful, want some coffee? Instead of saying can you believe those damn mushrooms eating our fence and those damn rats? Instead of leaving, and escaping the mundane, annoying distractions you love me enough to stay and build a life that sparkles. If I count the ways I love you, there would be too many flavors and aromas and too many reasons to love you. 

63

 

December 28, 2025 ~ I am 63 today

Today is December 28, 2025, the day I turn 63, and I will love this year.

I will love it because it will contain all the joy and sorrow that keeps the scales in balance. I’ll love it for the way it will kick my aging ass, and inspire me to get out of bed each morning. I will love it because I won’t be alone, even in the midst of loss and loneliness. I won’t be bored, even when I am forced to edit an AI-enhanced piece of work that some writer has given me. I am passionate about this, and most things: may I shout this from the rooftops again? Don’t use AI to write!! Your original voice matters!

My sixty-third year will remind me, on a daily basis, that beauty is mine if I look to see it and recognize it in the grain of a fine wood, the formation of wild geese flying above me, a unique sentence, or the radiance of a grandchild’s eyes. Love and friendship are mine if I stop what I’m supposed to be doing and remember the people around me. Today I spent a wonderful afternoon with my sister, a woman I value and cherish. 

On most days I feel an embarrassing and genuine sense of gratitude, knowing I don’t deserve most of the beauty and joy found in this life. I meet good people who smile, despite the hardships facing them. I pray with people who have greater faith than my own, and I get to borrow their hope. I enjoy a wealth of things I don’t deserve, like fresh oranges and grapefruits and occasional pomelo. I have noise reduction headphones that allow me to enjoy the passionate transitions from the third to fourth movements of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as if I am in a concert hall. I have adult children who love me and still talk to me, despite my incomplete and flawed mother presence in their lives. They have their own children now, human beings I love and adore and who challenge me to be better. And then, there is Mario, a man I love and admire more than any other man. For some reason, he loves me back. It’s the greatest reward to have a partner who gets me.

All of this is true, but I have my share of cold, dark days, as well. This year has had too many, in my opinion, and too many of them in a row. Sometimes, I have to remind myself to be grateful for doctors and medication, rather than give into despair. I try to stay focused on life and activity, and if I can’t, I sleep.

In both light and dark, I know one thing: at my very core, I’m defined by God. I look to Him for my purpose, and this is a gift to me. Today, I read the Psalm assigned to my birthday: Psalm 63. It was written by David, the Old Testament king who once slayed a giant with a slingshot. He is writing from a dark place in the desert, yearning to feel God’s presence, hear His voice about his uncertain future. He longs to see the power of the Lord, the glory of the Lord, like he once did, but on the day he writes Psalm 63, David is desperate. Fleeing his enemies, people who want to kill him, David remembers God. He says he thirsts for God the way the desert thirsts for water. In the dark of night, without proper shelter, even a king will reflect on  what he’s had and what he’s lost. Whether it’s a dark day, where your soul is thirsty, or your days are filled with splendor, this is a Psalm that directs your eyes to God. I’ll share it with you here, hoping it will be a beauty and a blessing in your life:

 

 
God, You are my God; I shall be watching for You;
My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You,
In a dry and exhausted land where there is no water.
So have I seen You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and glory.

 Because Your favor is better than life,
My lips will praise You.
So I will bless You as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
My soul is satisfied as with fat and fatness,
And my mouth offers praises with joyful lips.

When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches,
For You have been my help,
And in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to You;
Your right hand takes hold of me.

But those who seek my life to destroy it,
Will go into the depths of the earth.
They will be turned over to the power of the sword;
They will be a prey for foxes.
But the king will rejoice in God;
Everyone who swears by Him will boast,
For the mouths of those who speak lies will be stopped.