Friend

letter_f_erteFriend.

Fun, fellowship, faith, frolic, fantastic, fair, fond, forthright, feel, fulfill, fabulous, fealty, felicity, favored, flourish, forgiveness, familiarity, fruitful, festive, frank, fortifying, fraternal, fascinating, free, formidable, familial, facilitate, flexible, folksy, funny. Faithful.

A true blessing…

Talking, eating, playing, praying, saying, hugging, listening, learning, daring, dreaming, urging, cooking, texting, calling, running, speaking, nurturing, crying, whispering, mending, holding, caring, encouraging, teaching, trusting, accepting, being, cherishing, laughing, living. Sharing.

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
― C.S.Lewis

Edelweiss

eEdelweiss.

I usually say daisies are the friendliest flowers, but for today, I’m going to say edelweiss is the friendliest flower.

Because it starts with E, and I wasn’t going to pick a weirdly exotic word although now that I think of it, I might have had some fun sending you, dear reader, off on a wild goose chase.

Or maybe not. Instead, I’ll regale you with a mushy little love story. Mine.

When John and I were married, he was serving in the US Army in what was then West Germany. We lived in a beautiful little town, Bamberg, and all of Western Europe was our playground.

Austria was just a short drive away, and we went often. The Alps, you know, ARE RIGHT THERE!

And edelweiss grows in the Alps.

So my honey picked a lot of edelweiss for me to put in my hair. It was very long in those days, curly and black. I looked like Yvonne de Carlo.

And he looked like Christopher Plummer.

Do you know where this is going?

Yes.

He often sang Edelweiss to me.

 

edelweiss

Dare

dDare.

As in, double-dog dare. Only, the adult version of it.

When I was twenty and first read T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” I was struck by the speaker’s question, “Do I dare disturb the universe?”

Do I dare? Do I dare to disturb the comfort of my own little universe, the universe I have carefully measured out, not in coffee spoons, but in falsely created parameters and limits that I don’t cross…because, like Prufrock, I am afraid?

Afraid of going back to school.

Afraid of writing something too honest.

Afraid, maybe, of success.

I keep coming across a quotation from another favorite writer, Mark Twain.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Today, I will Dare to Discover.

 

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