Leap Day

Hollywood has given up many classic movies – Gone with the Wind, Titanic, and The Godfather to name a few. It isn’t hard to convince my husband to take me to the movies for blockbusters such as these. It is quite another matter when the movie is a chick flick filled with sappy romance. Which is why I found it so surprising that he suggested we see the film Leap Year when it came out in 2010.
An Ireland-born Irishman, my darling husband found the movie hilarious. It seems this was not just a piece of Hollywood magic but based on an actual Irish tradition which allows women to propose marriage to their boyfriends on February 29. Who knew!

So sit back, enjoy the movie trailer, and then polish up your proposal speech, girls.

Happy Leap Day!

Valentine’s Day Creed

Comfort each other. Provide a refuge and sanctuary for each other from the chill winds of the world. Your marriage is a hearth, from whence comes the peace, harmony, and warmth of soul and spirit.

Caress as you would be caressed. Warm your loved one’s body with your healing touch. Remember that as babies can die with lack of touching, so can marriages wither from lack of closeness.

Be a friend and partner. Friendship can be a peaceful island, separate and apart, in a world of turmoil and strife. Reflect upon the tranquility of the many future years you can share with a true friend, and beware of becoming battling enemies under the same roof.

Be open with each other. Bind not yourselves in the secretness that causes suspicion and doubt. Trust and reveal yourselves to each other, even as the budding rose opens to reveal its fragrance and beauty.

Listen to each other. Hear not only words, but also the non-language of tone, mood, and expression. Learn to listen to understand rather than listening to argue.

Respect each other’s rights. Remember that each is a person of flesh and blood, entitled to his or her own choices and mistakes. Each owns himself, and has the right to equality.

Allow the other to be an individual Seek not to create for each other a new mold that can only fit with much discomfort and pain. Accept the other as they are, as you would have yourself accepted.

Give each other approval. Remember criticism divides, while compliments encourage confidence in the other. Hasten not to point out the other’s mistakes, for each will soon discover his own.

Cherish your union. Let no one come between your togetherness, not child, not friend, nor possessions. Yet maintain enough separateness to allow each other his or her own uniqueness.

Love one another. Love is your river of life, your eternal source of recreating yourselves. Above all else, love one another.

New Year’s Wish for 2012

As the holiday bells ring out the old year, and sweethearts kiss, and cold hands touch and warm each other against the year ahead, may I wish you not the biggest and best of life but the small pleasures that make living worthwhile.

Sometime during the New Year, to keep your heart in practice, may you do someone a secret good deed and not get caught at it.  May you find a little island of time to read that book and write that letter, and to visit that friend.

May your next do-it-yourself project not look like you did it yourself.  May the poor relatives you helped support remember you when they win the lottery.  May your best card tricks win admiring gasps and your worst puns win admiring groans.  May all those who told you so, refrain from saying “I told you so.”

May all the predictions you’ve made for your future come true.  May just half of those optimistic predictions that your high school yearbook made for you come true.  In a time of sink or swim, may you find you can walk to shore before you call the lifeguard.  May you keep at least one ideal that you can pass along to your kids.

For a change, some rainy day when you’re late, may the train be waiting for you.  May you accidentally overhear someone saying something nice about you.  If you run into an old school friend, may you both remember each other’s names.  If you are on a diet, may someone say “You’ve lost some weight” without knowing you’re on a diet.

May that long and lonely night be brightened by a telephone call.  When you trip and fall, may there be no one watching to  laugh at you or feel sorry for you.  Sometime soon may you be waved at by a friend, smiled at by a stranger, wagged at by a puppy, run to by a child, and counted on by someone you love.

More than this, no one can wish you.

Happy New Year!

Star Light, Star Bright

Image via Wikipedia

Now that the days are growing shorter, I find myself leaving for work in the dark and returning home in the dark.   There is a bright side (excuse the pun) to the shorter days, however.  It gives me a chance to cast my eyes upward and gaze at the stars.

I am lucky enough to be far enough in the suburbs that I can actually see the stars from my garden without the interference of streetlights.  Not an astronomer in any sense of the word, I am still able to pick out a few of the major constellations – enough of the to make my junior high school science teachers proud.

Seeing the multitude of twinkling lights overhead never fails to fill me with awe.  How beautiful they are!  I look at them and wonder how many more worlds like our own or out there.  Will we ever get to see those worlds?  Are beings on those worlds looking up at the sky right now and thinking the exact same thing?

And what better place to sit and hold hands with the one you love than under a brilliant canopy of stars!  It is the perfect time to reminisce and to dream.

Fellow stargazers and dreamers, share your favorite place to look at the stars with us.

Online Dating?

Image via Wikipedia

Online dating is all the rage, it seems.  You cannot turn on the TV without seeing a commercial for a dating service, all of them guaranteeing to match you to someone with whom you would be happy to spend the rest of your life.

It reminds me of the “good old days” when a grandmother or a favorite aunt announced they knew someone who knew someone who had a son/daughter and wouldn’t it be nice if you went to a movie together.  Thankfully, I never had to endure that situation, but a great many of my friends did. In a word – disaster.

But it did start me thinking.  Would one of these mystical magical services have matched me with my husband, my soulmate for the last thirty-four years? Would he have picked me out of all the possible matches to his so-called compatibility profile?

So I broached the subject over dinner the other night.  Without even looking up from his plate, he gave an amused snort and said, “I doubt it. We have absolutely nothing in common … except that we are perfect for each other.”

True pearls of wisdom from the poet laureate of New Jersey.

I do agree with him, however.  I always have and always will believe that love is love and it will always find its perfect match if you let it.  If you make things such as money or good looks your main criteria for finding a mate, you will end up hurt or alone. 

What’s New on My Website

Image by Rookuzz via Flickr

Have you ever met someone you knew you could love forever but you never got the chance to say it? Or perhaps that someone special is not who they appear to be. Everything is a simple twist of Fate.

Follow the lives of five couples as they find their way on this winding path. The journey begins with Another Love Will Find Us. Jack and Annie meet one rainy afternoon and find that you can miss out on a chance for love if you are too cautious.

During the month of July, Taps will make its debut. Brooke meets Chris while they are in Paris. The secrets he harbors could bring their romance to an abrupt end, so he hides the truth in hope that love can really conquer all things.

In If It Takes Forever, Taye loses his heart to Cassie. Can he make her see beyond the dangerous life he leads to see the man he really is?

On the last day of her vacation, the paths of Jessie and Liam cross. Forty Shades of Green tells story of their long distance romance and the obstacles they have to overcome along the way.

Madison learns that being in the wrong place at the wrong time can have a very unusual result in Upon a Midnight Clear.

And don’t worry if you miss a part of your favorite story, the entire So Close collection will be available as an eBook late 2012.

A Few Words to My Husband

Image by petalouda62 (so busy...) via Flickr

It has been a while since I said anything here; there have been too few hours in the days. But I must take a moment to say a few words to my darling husband.

May you never steal, lie, or cheat. But if you must steal, then steal away my sorrows. If you must lie, then lie with me all the nights of my life. And if you must cheat, then cheat death so that I may live with you forever.

I love you.

Romanticism versus Romance Novels

Interestingly enough, the modern romance novel is not Romantic in the proper sense of the word.

Much like the word Liberal, the word Romance has decayed from its original meaning to encompass something virtually anathemic to its originators.

The Romantic movement is the idealization of emotion, desire, and freedom from constraint.  It places an extraordinary value on the world we live in, and most importantly our reactions to that world.  This is embodied in a love of nature, a love of passion, a love of love.  On the surface, this could really seem to indicate a commonality.  After all, aren’t romance novels about love?

The problem is, romance novels aren’t at all about freedom from constraint, but a surrender to it.  The most important literary figure of the romantic movement is the Byronic Hero.  The Byronic Hero is a flawed, chaotic being, a sort of fatal force that compels people toward the reckless, the freeing.  By his very definition the Byronic Hero is also doomed, unable to change or redeem himself from his most fundamental flaws.  This is what makes him Romantic, the ability to be himself despite all surrounding impulse, good or bad.  There can be no happily ever after for the Byronic Hero, and yet that’s what the modern romance novel demands of him.

The modern romance is about taming the wild heart.  Pick up any romance book with some sort of warrior on the cover, and see how soon it asks ‘can she tame him’ or something of like mind.  Next, go to any publisher of romantic books, and see how long you can go until they insist on a HEA (happily ever after) or at the very least a HFN (happy for now).

Of course language changes over time, and I don’t begrudge it.  But all the same, there is a value in remembering where our words have come from.  So next time you consider picking up a romance novel, perhaps consider also finding a good Romantic one.

My Summer To-do List

Every New Year’s Day I make resolutions (doesn’t everyone?) and over the years, I have kept quite a few. Most, however, are recycled into the next year, the following year, and so on. I guess you can say that I am not meticulous about New Year’s resolutions.

What I do make and keep, on the other hand, is my summer to-do list. The list is always short and filled with things I really, really want to accomplish. This year’s list is no exception:

1. Biking.  I love biking. I feel free and calm, with the world rolling passed my eyes at a eisurely pace. I haven’t gotten to do it for quite some time due to health reasons, but this year I am treating myself to a brand new bicycle and touring the neighborhood.
2. Read a good book. I love reading, and there is nothing better than lazing an afternoon away in the garden with a good book and a glass of iced tea.
3.  Travel. I have not been able to travel like I used to (see #1 for reason), but that’s all behind me now. Long trip or short, I want to go to new places and do things I have always wanted to do with the one I love.

Do you have a summer to-do list?

A Thousand Words of Love

My Love, you know that I am not always clever with words. I have always relied on your easy, warm and understanding smile. But just this once I want to tell you that I love you like no one has ever told you before. There is a much greater motivation than simply my spoken words. For me, to love is to commit myself freely and without reservation. I am sincerely interested in your happiness and well-being. Whatever your needs are, I will try to fulfill them and will bend in my values depending upon the importance of your need. If you are lonely and need me, I will be there. If in that loneliness you need to talk, I will listen. If you need to listen, I will talk to you. If you need the strength of touch, I will touch you. If you need to be held, I will hold you. I will lie next to you if that is your need. If you need fulfillment of the flesh, I will give you that also. I will try to be constant with you so that you will understand the core of my personality and from that understanding gain the strength of security that I am acting as me. I, on occasion, may falter in my moods. I may project, at times, a strangeness that is alien to you, which may bewilder or even frighten you. There will be times when you may question my motives. But because people are never constant and are as changeable as the seasons, I will try to build up within you a faith in my fundamental attitude and show you that my inconsistency is only for a moment and is not a lasting part of me. I will show you love now. Each and every day, for every day is a lifetime. Every day that we live, we learn more how to love. I will not defer in my love, nor neglect it, for if I wait until tomorrow, tomorrow never comes. It is like a cloud in the sky, passing quickly by. If I give you kindness and understanding, then I receive your faith. If I give you hate and dishonesty, I will receive your distrust. If I give you fear and am afraid, you will become afraid and fear me. I will give you what you need to receive. To what degree I give my love is determined by my past and by my understanding of truth and love. My understanding is determined by my parents, friends, and places I have been. All experiences that have been fed into my mind from living. I will give you as much love as I can. If you show me how to give more, then I will give you more. I can only give as much love as you need to receive or allow me to give. If you receive all that I can give, then my love is endless and fulfilled. I must give all that I am capable of giving. Love is universal. Love is the movement of life. All things in life I find beautiful. No human being or society has the right to condemn any kind of love I feel or my way of expressing it. If I am sincere, sincerity being the honest realization of myself and there is no hurt or pain intentionally involved in my life or any life mine touches. I want to become a truly loving spirit. Let my words, when I speak, become a restoration of your soul. And when speech is silent, let my passion project a depth of sensitivity. When I touch you, when I kiss you, when I hold you, or when I love you, I am saying a thousand words.

Happy Valentine’s Day!