By the way, our experience of marrying just seven months after we’d first met is just one more example among many that short engagements often do lead to very successful marriages.
Card From Walmart
The card I got Harriet this year came from Walmart. I didn’t spend very much time picking it out. Maybe the most shocking aspect of this confession is not that I didn’t spend very much time picking out the card, but that I, a practicing poet, used a store bought card in the first place. Yes, I do confess that I use store bought cards—and I enjoy doing it. I’ve written original poems to my wife before, and I am sure I will write more, but to this point the inspiration to write something for her has not come at the time of those annual milestones in her life—birthdays, anniversaries, and Valentine’s Day.
On the other, I do enjoy the experience of going to a store, mingling with the crowd, and picking out a card. In some past postings to Mind Check, I’ve confessed to the fact that I am an introvert—one of those people who normally gets a shot of energy from being alone rather than from being with others. Being with others is sometimes exhausting for me—all that talk, talk, talk. There are exceptions, and one of them involves mingling with crowds where we all have a common purpose, for example, sharing the excitement of being involved together in making purchases for a shared event like Valentine’s Day. Exciting!
Weekly Supermarket Shopping
I can remember when I first came to the Washington, DC, area in 1978. I had left my first marriage, and I was trying to reestablish myself in this new area where I knew almost no one. Yes, I was lonely. One of the things I would look forward to during this transitional time in my life was the weekly shopping trip, almost always on Saturdays, to the nearest supermarket. I didn’t have to talk to anyone. Just being with the other people in the busy supermarket where I could share in the energy that came from busy people with the common purpose of weekly food shopping was good enough.
Let me get back to the Valentine’s Day card that I got Harriet this time around. As I said, I didn’t give it that much thought when I picked it out, but I now think that I ended up with the best Valentine’s Day card I’ve ever gotten her. The main reason that it is the best is that the message so perfectly captures what I believe.
Back from Big Island
As I’ve previously indicated, Harriet and I are just back from the Big Island of Hawaii where we had a wonderful time. One of the great things about this vacation was that we were able to work on reconnecting family relationships that had gotten a little frayed after four years of separation. In case, I didn’t mention it before, we have family on the Big Island of Hawaii—son Scott, daughter-in-law Yumiko and grandson Sebastian, known as Sebi. We don’t get to see them nearly enough. Inevitably some bad feelings may get introduced into a relationship when family members don’t see each other for a prolonged period of time, and we wanted to make sure through this trip that negatives like these got smoothed over.
Hence the purpose of the trip was not to do anything for Harriet and my relationship, which was already as good as it could be, in my opinion. That was one of the ideas that I was trying to express with the card. Here is the message on the card, a Hallmark card in the “connections by Hallmark” series.
If someone were to ask me
What a perfect day would be,
I wouldn’t think of places
that have lovely sights to see,
I wouldn’t wish for sunny skies
or special things to do,
For I’d just want to have a day
That I could spend with you…
And if someone were to ask me
What would make a perfect life,
I’d simply say “I have that,”
for I have you for my wife.
To put the matter another way: I don’t need to make a trip to Hawaii or any other beautiful place to give meaning to my life. Just being with my wife is good enough for me.
Thank you, Hallmark and thanks for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my two latest books, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat and City Above The Sea And Other Poems are now available online. Links to the publisher Xlibris can be found on the sasaft website.
Copyright © 2009 by Stephen Alan Saft
