Yesterday four boxes arrived from Mike--things I'd bought at flea markets along the way on our October trip. Thirteen states and many memories came spilling out of those boxes when I opened them in Texas!
He spent more to mail them than I'd spent buying them, and each one is a treasure. A cookie jar from a Pennsylvania flea market on my birthday, seven Mason jars from Maryland, little wooden cats, a green tea pot I'd bought for a dollar on my freezing cold birthday, a painted Mexican chair for a child.... Opening them was like a belated birthday party, me all healed from my fall down the stairs.
Today Box Five arrived, dishes and bowls and overalls for Alison who makes aprons out of them. There were three broken dishes, but still enough to make a super-cool setting of these Italian folk-art dishes I'd forgotten I'd even bought! I'll use the broken dishes as part of a mosaic.
There are always a few broken things in life, and I figure it's up to me to make something new out of what can be salvaged.
Ironically, the last item in Box Five was a yellow sugar bowl. (The cream pitcher was either broken or was absent when I bought them in New York.) When I was choosing wedding gifts fifty years ago, it was a sugar bowl I bought first. It seemed strangely full circle to end my opening of boxes with a sugar bowl from a man who's genuinely sweet to the core--though he'd hate hearing me say that of him; he'd say I'm blowing his bad boy cover!
Tomorrow one more package will arrive, the best of the trip's finds--a beautiful 1800s trunk I bought with birthday money from Carlene. I'm all set to decoupage the inside as I did a trunk of Mike's a couple of years ago.
Mike wrote on the valentine card what he always says to me, even now that we are "broken up," the words engraved on his mailbox: "Mike loves Linda Forever 2007." Once (in the years between our Chapter One and Chapter Two) Carlene and I stopped in Hartwell to say hello to Mike as we were driving back to Georgia from Virginia. I couldn't resist getting out of the car, even though he wasn't home, and checking to see if the engraving was still there--and it was!
After we met in September of 2007, and after I'd taken a solo road trip to New England, I stopped to see him on my way home to Texas. He had made welcoming signs all along a stretch of Highway 29 leading to his house, one word on each sign like the old Burma Shave signs. The next morning, he served a beautiful breakfast on the sun porch, along with two mini Reeses and a Diet Coke, flowers, candles, and eggs served on china. Who can resist a man who makes breakfast like that?
I moved in with him that November and stayed until May!
We've been through some rocky times this past year, but the words on his mailbox, he says, will outlast them, just like the countless permanent and beautiful things he's built for me and bought me. The remodeled casita, the happy deck, a stained glass lamp on the porch, painted walls, so much more. "No matter who what when where," he says, "even if I never see you again, you're my only valentine, the love of my life."
In ways that only the two of us can understand, it's mutual; it's karma; it's a great big beating set of hearts, in spite of ourselves. I don't know how to engrave (and don't have a mailbox) so I'll just set it in words right here: Linda loves Mike forever, 2017.
No comments:
Post a Comment