Today has been a constant deluge of rain. We all had to be coaxed from the blanket of darkness that is the morning. It is a day that began without us.
Jonathan has been single-handedly carving a banister and railing from oak this week; his love for my parents made tangible; his nights, long; and our household loud with buzzing and hacking and sawing. Maybe that’s why we slept in longer than usual.
I assigned my children the task of reading aloud, then re-interpreting Shakespeare’s Sonnet CXVI this week, not knowing they would choose today, our anniversary, to pay attention to each word. (They are learning to appreciate the turns of phrase, but they get annoyed by the lack of utility in iambic pentameter.)
I just want to share it with you:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Love has the strength and fortitude of an oak standing in defiance of the storm. It ages offering shade and fruit, and still supports us when cut down. Isn’t love a wonder?*
Our love has years where we sing and slow dance to Tony! Toni! Toné! serenading us on our special day, and years where the rain on the roof slowly rouses us and we put on the hot water for the tea and coffee and coax the boys to make their beds. It has years of pure astonishment that we made it, and years of contemplative appreciation and joy.
And some years, our sons rewrite sonnets about love, by serendipity.
*I know: all love ain’t like this. I know, Beloved. We bear the scars of loves not at all like this.
How beautiful
Happy Anniversary! As usual what a beautiful piece! I love the LOVE theme. We are on our way to see Wakanda Forever! Fond memories of when we met for the first time to see Black Panther.