Anne's House of Dreams...and mine

I can't remember when I first read Lucy Maud Montgomery's book "Anne's House of Dreams."  But since that time, I've re-read it at least 10 times.  Her story of the former orphan, Anne (of Green Gables, for those who did not know that the story continues through several more books), her garden wedding and her sweet house of dreams on the coast of PEI was the stuff dreams were made of for me.

"The first glimpse of her new home was a delight to eye and spirit--it looked so like a big, creamy seashell stranded on the harbor shore. The rows of tall Lombardy poplars down its lane stood out in stately, purple silhouette against the sky. Behind it, sheltering its garden from the too keen breath of sea winds, was a cloudy fir wood, in which the winds might make all kinds of weird and haunting music. Like all woods, it seemed to be holding and enfolding secrets in its recesses,--secrets whose charm is only to be won by entering in and patiently seeking. Outwardly, dark green arms keep them inviolate from curious or indifferent eyes.

The night winds were beginning their wild dances beyond the bar and the fishing hamlet across the harbor was gemmed with lights as Anne and Gilbert drove up the poplar lane. The door of the little house opened, and a warm glow of firelight flickered out into the dusk. Gilbert lifted Anne from the buggy and led her into the garden, through the little gate between the ruddy-tipped firs, up the trim, red path to the sandstone step.

"Welcome home," he whispered, and hand in hand they stepped over the threshold of their house of dreams."

Somewhere deep inside me, despite the plans for career and success in the world, I wanted that home, that romantic marriage.  And I've only now realized, on starting yet another read with Anne and Gilbert and the rest of PEI, that I have it.

No, my home doesn't overlook the sea -- but it's only a few minutes away.  And like Anne's house of dreams, mine is surrounded with huge, lovely trees that make our yard a green oasis that we are in the process of transforming into a magical space. And like Anne, I had my wedding in a garden, then went home with my beloved new husband.

Today, the 6th, is the day, about a year and half ago, when we went on our first date.  Dinner and a movie. Now we are 6 months into our marriage, busy creating our own house of dreams.  Like Anne and Gilbert in the story, we know that this house will not be our forever-home.  But it's a place where we are starting out together. And that makes it a house of dreams.

Maybe Anne's story was just an early 20th century version of a fairy tale. Can a life dream really be based on a fairy tale?  Maybe.  Even Albert Einstein believed in the power of fairy tales, believing them to be the greatest tool for inspiring creativity and imagination and success in young minds.  And who am I, now living my fairy tale, to argue with Einstein?!

Seeing the wedding coming together....

Pressed glassed pitchers for ice cold lemonade and tea

Jewel-toned glass bowls that in a few weeks will be filled with fresh fruit, tempting tumbles of muffins or rich buttery croissants

Be-ribboned wands on their way, flowing with sage, deep purple and vanilla streamers

Music being selected, a growing list of sweet sounds to fill a garden

A tempting menu of treats and sweets in the works

Whimsical surprises to delight the eyes and ears as our guests wander the gardens

The search for the perfect chuppah, the most beautiful ketubah, the ideal dresses for the girls

Tiny details, each noted in a small lavender book, as the ideas go from wild imaginings to reality

Inspired, creating, dreaming

Little golden boxes filled with sweet treats...

Fairy furnishings to peek from among the trees...

Wind chimes to sing in the breeze...

Magical lights and magic wands...

Messages of welcome, filled with flowers...

Magic, magic, magic...

Some quotes on love and art

ON LOVE:

For those of us who had to go through a few toads before finding our prince....

Lucky is the man who is the first love of a woman,
but luckier is the woman who is the last love of a man.
~ Unknown ~

We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.
~ Agnes Repplier ~

ON ART:

All art requires courage.
~Anne Tucker ~

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?"
~ Howard Ikemoto ~

Art disturbs, science reassures.
~ Georges Braque ~, Le Jour et la nuit

Loving a person vs looking for a clone

Open letter to a friend:

The question was about love, and loving someone who was, in some ways, your perfect match, and in other ways, very different from yourself.

You love her, and yet you ended the relationship because she did not share all of your beliefs. You admit that it was the best relationship you've ever had, or believe you ever will have, and yet, you said goodbye?

I'm afraid you're confusing a clone with a partner.

A clone is exactly the same. A partner shares some aspects of your life, and differs in others.

A clone never challenges you to grow or change or question. A partner brings into the relationship new ideas, new thoughts, new vitality.

A clone can never really make the choice to love you because they are, essentially, already you. A partner makes a conscious choice to say "I love you for the things we share, and I love you for the things that make you unique and different."

A clone is the ultimate "yes man." A partner is the person who will stand by your side even when the answer is no.

A clone feeds your ego, because they already agree with everything you think. A partner is someone you love regardless of whether or not they agree with you, because it's not about feeding an ego.

To fit together and make a beautiful picture, a puzzle needs pieces of different sizes and shapes, different colors. Two pieces that are identical make one of them unnecessary.

She clearly was not looking for a clone, a duplicate puzzle piece in male form. She was happy loving a whole man who in some ways is very different from herself. And loving him, not IN SPITE OF the difference, but because of them and the way that the differences and similarities in your lives came together to make a truly magnificent picture.

Clones are relatively easy to find. There are countless chameleons among us, especially among women, who will pretend to be whatever a man wants her to be.

But real love? THAT is rare and precious and a gift beyond all measure. And I believe the very universe weeps when someone throws it away.

You clearly love her. She clearly loves you. The rest is just detail.

(Image from Sarah-land)

Disney day

We went to Disney...my favorite place on earth! We rode the rides and watched the parade and planned another trip with the kids along.

We held hands and compared memories of visits there when we were little. I wondered if we had ever been in the park together, and not met -- not yet time. Or maybe rode a ride together and never knew we would meet again years later. In Disney World, anything seems possible.

Disney worked its magic. Lance snapped this beautiful shot of Cinderella's abode as the sun faded. We ended the day watching the fireworks over the castle, and dreaming about future visits together.

And although I saw some rough edges this time -- some rides in need of updates, some technology lagging behind competitors like Universal -- I still would not trade this place for any on earth. It is and always will be the Magic Kingdom for me. And now I have a prince to share it with. :-)

Love in action: cooking

Some random thoughts about cooking as an act of love.

• On my vision board from a couple of years ago, there was a quote snipped from a magazine: Remember the sacred art of nourishing. I try to always keep that in mind as I plan for, shop for and cook meals.
  
  
• My friend Omar always says that he cooks with love. And it's true. Each and every dish he makes is infused with love. You can actually feel it.
  
  
• A Buddhist nun in Salt Lake City, Utah told me that your feelings affect the health and nutrition of the food you cook. If you are feeling grumpy or angry or sad, she said it's best to stay out of the kitchen because those emotions will affect the food and those who eat it.

Tonight I am cooking dinner. On the menu, there will be a homemade arrabiata sauce with sauteed eggplant. A fresh green salad, with baby greens, sliced fruit and nuts. For dessert, chilled peaches, maybe even with kasiri cheese if I get to Whole Foods in time. And in each dish, there will be love.

Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!!

Dreaming of traveling with someone special to places familiar and well loved like Key West and California, and places yet uncharted in my life so far (ok, in THIS lifetime) like Russia and Egypt and Samoa.

Dreaming of more days and evenings with friends like last week's trip into the waters off Key Largo, Teresa's birthday party, annual visits to friends in PA. (almost Ren Faire time again!),last night's dinner at Seasons 52, or the upcoming tubing trip in North Florida.

Dreaming of publishing books written and books yet to write.

Dreaming of love and family and holding hands (and hearts) for years and years to come.

Dreaming of sharing my Shabbas table with guests who have shared meals with me before, and those I have yet to meet.

Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming...on a rainy Florida morning.

(rain on grass image from Tingog.com)

Dorothy Parker style love poem

Hurry, hurry, I have no time for you

Tell me your concerns, my love
But do it fast, get through.
The time is quickly passing
And I’ve better things to do.

Just list the facts and nothing more
Your pain, your hopes, your fear.
Your overwhelming feelings too
But make it quick, my dear.

I called you now, should be enough
Never mind the stress
Just spit it out, then let me go
No touching, no caress

You’ll cry alone? Not my concern.
I’ve called – that’s what’s the key
Now just hang up, this call is done
The rest is up to me.

Words from a song....

More true than I would like to admit....never heard of the song or the artist before today, but it touched me....

She loves her mama's lemonade,
Hates the sound that goodbyes make.
She prays one day she'll find someone to need her.
She swears that there's no difference,
Between the lies and compliments.
It's all the same if everybody leaves her.

And every magazine tells her she's not good enough,
The pictures that she sees make her cry.

And she would change everything, everything just ask her.
Caught in the in-between
a beautiful disaster,
And she just needs someone to take her home...

And she would change everything, everything just ask her.
Caught in the in-between of beautiful disaster,

And she would change everything for happy ever after.
Caught in the in-between of beautiful disaster...

-- Jon Mclaughlin - Beautiful Disaster

Sleeping alone, napping with someone you love

To nap with someone is the realization of your inner self. To sleep alone is misery.

-- Moawya

My friend sent me this as a text message yesterday. We are both in the middle of exploring new relationships and trying to find that elusive thing called love. So we talk a lot. Calm each other's fears. Try to sort out what we hope will happen from what is really happening. Give each other support and warnings. And a few times, have even pulled each other from moments of dispair.

But this text message stopped me cold. "Realization of your inner self..." may seem like a lot to put on an ordinary nap. But it's not.

He is right.

When we are small, we nap in the safety of our cribs, our homes, usually with a parent nearby. Sometimes even cradled in the arms of someone who loves us. Safe. Protected. We rest and gain strength and recharge for the next adventures or tests we'll face after our nap. Whether it was an outing to the park or one more try at walking across the vast space that was the living room, after the nap we were ready.

As adults, most of us seldom nap. Unless we're sick, we are far from our beds from the beginning of our day to the end. If we're married or with a partner, we may share that bed at night. If we're single, we may spend our nights alone, or perhaps sometimes with a lover. We make love or read or watch tv in our beds...we are doing. Or it is nighttime and we are sleeping.

But a nap, as an adult, is different from other sleep. It is a return to that safety of infancy. It has no agenda. It's not about sex or night time. It's just about rest and renewal.

To share that moment of innocence and safety with another person is a profound act of trust. It is to admit our fatigue and our needs, and then to awaken in broad daylight again with this person next to us, all our flaws visible, faces bearing the marks of our pillows or our hands, hair messed up, perhaps even clothing rumpled if the nap was unplanned. It is to entrust our sleeping selves to this person who is sharing our bed while the rest of the world runs around outside our window.

It is to steal a moment from the time when adults are supposed to be productive or at least busy and return for just a moment to the freedom of our childhood.

You're right, my friend. I already owe you so many thanks for all our hours on the phone and the wisdom you've shared.

In return, I wish you someone to share a nap with...

Does "I love you" have an expiration date?

Another Sex in the City inspired post....

In one episode, Carrie tells Big that she loves him. He responds with some comment totally off subject, and she gets annoyed. She concludes that an unreturned "I love you" has about the same shelf life as a dairy product...about a week.

In another episode (or maybe the same one? ) Samantha sums up the problem men and women have with those three little words...

You can tell a man you hate him and have the best sex of your life. But tell him "I love you" and you'll probably never see him again.

Is that really true? Has love become so scarce that people have to ration it out, choosing to walk away instead of loving in return? What are we so scared of?

And what about the love between two people when a relationship ends? Does it stay out there in the universe, somewhere in the background like an inconspicuous piece in a big collage? Just an eye or a hand or a bit of color within the big picure?

Or does that expire too...souring and congealing -- needing to be put out with the week's peelings and egg shells like that carton of milk from the back of the fridge that no one wants to open?

Oh heck, I really am like Carrie!

For a long time...even before I ever saw the HBO series Sex in the City, my friends told me I was just like Carrie. I didn't have HBO, so I didn't know who Carrie was except that she was on a series that I assumed featured a lot of sex. I didn't get the connection at all.

Then Sex in the City came to network TV. And I got hooked! They were right...

Of course, there is the obvious...Carrie is a writer, I am a writer. But I quickly saw there was more...

Like Carrie, I really and truly believe in the possibility of love happy ever after...in one episode she said:

I'm looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love.

Yup, that's me. Not the cynical, cold and fearful Miranda, the rules obsessed Charlotte or the "just the sex please" Samantha. Nope. I am the Carrie-esque believer in true love. The hopeless romantic to the core.

And like Carrie, I've had a lot of near misses. But I still believe. Maybe it goes with being a writer. Maybe it's harder to be a lawyer or a public relations specialist or work in an art gallery and maintain that belief in the white knight. As a writer, we are aware of the meaning that a single word can hold -- and of the incredible value that three words (or the absence of those three words) can contain.

And we won't even go into the shoes! I had a dozen pairs of $200+ shoes before I hit age 21! The semi-annual Nordstrom shoe sale is still something I have to avoid if I want to pay my bills. And the fact that I'm working on a high end shoe catalog right now...well, let's just say, I left my credit cards locked away!

And now, even the settings from Sex in the City are showing up! Friday night, I went out for dinner and dancing. And as I walked into the restaurant with friends and my boyfriend, I stopped cold...there in front of me, right out of Sex in the City, were the beds. The beds you were supposed to eat on! They were real! It was all I could do not to laugh out loud!

Unfortunately, no one in my group was willing to sit on the beds for our dinner so we dined at a regular table. Next to a bed. While I wondered what it would be like to sit there on the red velvet, relaxing against the pillows and eating a meal right out of a television show.

My friends have wondered why I didn't blog about Sex in the City before...and I kept meaning to. I guess it took some red velvet canopy beds to push me over the edge.