It’s the day before Valentine’s and I can picture everyone scurrying around shopping and surfing through cards trying to pick the one that best fit their sentiments. How do you effectively express your love to someone that’s meaningful and touches the heart? It’s easy to pick out a card or take your loved one to dinner and why not? It’s fun and it’s sweet. But sometimes you want to do something a little different – something that will be remembered longer than when Valentine’s Day is gone. I know everyone is doing it so I’ll join in and jump on the bandwagon and list some ideas of my own on ways to meaningfully express your love to that special someone. Here goes:

1. Not only on Valentine’s Day but for the remainder of Valentine’s Week, each day slip a note somewhere saying why you love them. It may be on the bathroom mirror or a note next to their coffee mug. Write more than a few words. Give them details on how unique and special they are to you.

2. Cook a special meal with wine and candlelight and soft music. You don’t always have to go out to enjoy yourselves. You can make it special and comfortable right at home.

3. If you’re musically inclined, compose a song and sing it to them. Or, write them a poem. If you’re not good at composing, you could just write them a letter sharing your love for them. On our 40th wedding anniversary, I got a blank, rustic journal from the book store and titled it 40 years and in it I wrote on 40 things we shared together and experienced, the things I love about him and his strengths along with pictures. It was a memorable moment when I gave it to him and he loved it.

4. Surprise them with asking them out on a date and if you live close to where you first met revisit some of the old places you went and recreate the night as if you were first dating. If you live far from where you first met, still call them up and ask them out on a date and plan an evening as if you had first met.

5. Recapture what it was that first attracted you to them and hold it in your mind’s eye and see it in that person now only value how much more they mean to you. Express that to them in some way through word or touch. There’s a sweetness of young love. You can see it captured in Janie’s wedding picture, 22 years ago on her Wordless Wednesday post on Colloquium. Valentine’s Day is special as it gives us a time to stop everything we’re doing and what we’re involved with and remember what’s important and celebrate.

6. Turn off the TV and play some old songs. Sit on the floor in front of the fireplace and cuddle, reminisce and talk to each other again about hopes and dreams.

7. You may be dating or in a long term relationship but not married. These are the times when Valentine’s Day is fresh and real. You’re creating a memory. You may start your own tradition. Maybe it’s a get-away weekend with hot tubs and massages. Just to get away and spend one-on-one time with each other is invaluable. Or maybe you create a memorable Valentine’s Day where you get dressed up and go to an opera or a play or just go out dancing. It’s not so much what you do but how you feel just being with each other.

Whatever you do tomorrow for Valentine’s Day, do it with your soul and heart. Cherish this time that you have to spend with this special someone and share that with them. Take care to show them how much you value them and how they brighten and add to your life.

In his book, Wisdom of the Ages, Dr. Wayne Dyer, shares a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

From the kitchen table – Pat
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When there are a teenager, an 8-yr old and 22-month old, all boys, in the house, visiting, it doesn’t appear that there would be much silence. But, if you listen between the cartoons, the light sabers swirling around, the guitar, drum and football floating through the air, the love that flows constitutes silence. It’s the feeling that all is right with the world and it comes with children in different shapes and sounds.

It seems like I’ve been writing about family and children more in my last few posts (see Making Memories and Jokes, Family and Fun). It’s the invisible force I feel that is ever present when I focus on family and loved ones. Yes, we go through the everyday routine of chores, jobs, errands but what flows in the background, just as the music between the notes, is the essence of life. You learn as you get older having passed some of the trials and witnessed the highs and lows that life gets sweeter and more precious with each passing day. You try not to take for granted the moments of every fleeting day.

So, where is this silence? It never leaves even when all the noise commands attention. It’s the same with spirituality and God’s presence. Going through each day is demanding with the thousands of thoughts to sort through and the physical interactions no wonder silence and spiritual essence is so hard to detect. You’re focus is being pulled in every direction saying, “Pay attention to me – No, pay attention to me.” What do you listen to? You have to choose. You can feel it if you’re aware of it while there are distractions all around. You have to consciously look for it and it will present itself to you.

Have you been up late at night and listened to the silence between the hours of midnight and 3:00 am. It’s different somehow. There’s a hush where it seems that all the world is in slumber. If you’re up in the mountains or out in the woods it’s a time where you hear the wildlife moving around. You might hear an occasional dog bark or the snorting of a horse. Or, if it’s snowing, you can hear the snow as it drifts down and lands on the ground. You feel a deeper connection to the world somehow.

Children, while they may be a distraction with play and noise, have a pure innocence that ushers in, believe it or not, the essence of silence and love. As it says, in Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God…” When we can quiet ourselves and be still, we can know there is a God and when we can’t be quiet and the silence seems distant feel the peace, feel the essence of silence as it hums in the background. Soon you will be able to bring it forward.

From the kitchen table – Pat
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There was a funny story passed along to me via e-mail that I wanted to share with you. It sets the stage to lighten up, play and not take ourselves too seriously. I laughed out loud when I read this. I hope you laugh too. It’s called “Dad at the Mall”:

I took my dad to the mall the other day to buy some new shoes. We decided to grab a bite at the food court. I noticed he was watching a teenager sitting next to him. The teenager had spiked hair in all different colors: green, red, orange, and blue. My dad kept staring at him. The teenager would look and find him staring every time.

When the teenager had enough, he sarcastically asked, “What’s the matter old man, never done anything wild in your life?” Knowing my Dad, I quickly swallowed my food so that I would not choke on his response; knowing he would have a good one. And in classic style he did not bat an eye in his response, “Got drunk once and had sex with a peacock. I was just wondering if you were my son”

I’m in a play mode for the next few days and the energies have shifted. It’s time to let go of the ‘have do’s’ for a little while and enjoy the present moment. That’s what happens when kids are around. School is out for a couple of days for teachers’ meetings and the grandsons are spending some time with us and the 22-month old will join us tomorrow. We’ll have a house full of kids, we grandparents, a dog and a horse. When they come up with us to the mountains, everything changes: our routines, what we eat (hot dogs – mac and cheese), and what we watch on television – Looney Tunes. Having kids around changes everything. You hear more giggling, there’s tickling, and rough housing. It changes the energy and I love it.

Just in January, since the beginning of the New Year, my husband and I have already gone through our 88 yr-old mother/mother-in-law having to be admitted to the hospital while visiting for the holidays in Denver, our 23-yr old horse suddenly dying, and I was let go from my temp job. We needed a grandson(s) fix. There has been too much serious stuff going on with us having to deal with. It’s time to get down and play and enjoy life and grandchildren automatically put you in that mode. It’s not what you do so much as it’s how you do it and your attitude.

I know each time they come to visit there’s the familiarity of the house, the sounds and smells each creating a memory that something will trigger sometime in the future. I know I have those triggers that flash me back as a child at my grandmother’s: the fizzle and smell of a freshly poured coke, the sound of seagulls and the smell of salt air. Living in the west, I don’t get much of a chance to hear seagulls or smell salt air but the memories are there waiting to be announced.

When we were small, I remember one night sitting on the front porch in a small town in Virginia with my cousins. We were laughing and talking and could hear my grandparents inside – Grandma was in the kitchen finishing up the dishes and Grandpop was settling down to watch some TV. We continued talking and watched the people walk by on the sidewalk and the cars go by and didn’t realize it was getting late. As we sat there, we heard a noise and looked over to the railing at the end of the porch and saw some movement. All of a sudden, we saw what we thought was a ghost coming out of the shadows and up and over the railing at us. We all screamed and took off running in different directions only to find out it was Grandma with a sheet over her head looking to scare us. She succeeded and when we finally came back to the house and our hearts settled down we had a good laugh.

What are some of the things you do to let go of stress and demands? Do you play video games on the computer or go dancing? Maybe you get some friends together and go out and sing karaoke. Maybe you just chase the grandkids around the house like we do only to hear the squeals of glee and laughter when you catch them and tickle them. Such joy – there’s nothing like it. Whatever it is, life is meant to be shared and enjoyed and we all need to just get down and play once in a while.

From the ol’ kitchen table – Pat