Gift of Your Heart

An anniversary is a time for roses, dinner out, and a pause from our household to-do lists. This year, I flashback to 48 years ago. I can still smell the scent of gardenias wrapped in love, the delicious taste of the Italian cookie tray carried throughout the reception by my Nonnie, and the late-night rain. Where has the time gone? Has it been cloaked in obligations, to-do lists, and expectancies? I wonder if we pause enough to consider the magnitude of the word togetherness?

I may not know the answers to the questions I pose but I do know that time has been full of fleeting moments sweeping throughout the decades. I peel through physical and virtual albums that hold a treasury of thoughts. Some pictures are faded from years of storage and others are memorialized. The heart knows what exists. 

I have been thinking about life lately. I surmise that life is a series of moments remembered in intentional pauses. Tucked away in each sacred moment there is a foundational piece called love. It floats in and out like the waves upon the shore. Love is the underlying emotion that knows no bounds. Is love sometimes hidden due to unexpected events and fears?

I have been taking a walk down memory lane awaiting the actual date and coincidentally came across the collage below. Anniversaries celebrate gifts of the heart so the collage and poems are my gift to my husband.

💗Another Year of Togetherness💗

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💗Gift of Your Heart💗

Within the bonds of love shall we give

streams of floating waves of

pause-itivity time to savor your

thoughts from the heart?

©CVarsalona, 2024

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As a child, I stared into the stain glass mural of St. Francis of Assisi each day I walked into grammar school. The following inspiration thought by St. Francis was quoted in The Sun & Moon Over Assisi by Gerard Thomas Straub.

Where there is love and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.

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Both my husband and I enjoy the writings of Kahlil Gibran. I offer his beautiful prose poem on love.

Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the     pillars of   the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow. -Kahlil Gibran

You can also read the lengthier piece, On Marriage found at the Poetry Foundation that holds this beautiful line: And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. 

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Join me at Laura Purdie Salas' blog post for this week's Poetry Friday Roundup. It's the book birthday for her new children's picture book, Line Leads the Way. Take a sneak peek to let the fun begin. I plan on sharing the short videos with my little grandgirls who will come to Grandma's house again. Then, off we go to our long-awaited, week-long, family beach vacation in Cape May, New Jersey.

This year, Little Lila makes her debut sitting on the sand

and Grandma and Grandpa celebrate year number 48.