My husband is away this week on a business trip. He calls each morning as he starts his day, each afternoon as he takes a lunch break and each evening, at least once, to have a final chat. Before leaving, he stocks the refrigerator, takes out the garbage, and makes sure all the bills are paid and up to date. He’s only going to be a few hours away but his love is solid and the rock my daughter and I live our lives upon.
It’s Valentine’s Day Thursday. My daughter is covered—her boxes of hearts addressed and decorated with stickers and a lollipop for good measure with each box. I have nothing planned for my husband those few miles away. Our struggle for entrepreneurial success strips my creativity leaving me with the thought, if there isn’t money to spend on frivolity then there shall be no fun. Bah!
As I finish up my latest reading obsession, The Sonnet Lover by Carol Goodman, I read one of Shakespeare’s latest and greatest sonnets, with which her book is ladened, and realize it is the perfect gift to give my husband for no words could I craft and string together more perfectly than Shakepeare has done with Sonnet 116 to describe his sincere and deep devotion:
SONNET 116
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.
—William Shakespeare
There is no more to say except,
Happy Valentine’s Day, Dear, today and everyday after ...
