Back in the day when it seemed we had a wedding gift to buy every month and a ceremony and reception to attend, some of us offered various ‘gifts’ to the newlyweds that couldn’t be purchased at Rike’s or Elder-Beerman or Sears. Old friends will remember a band I used to sing in, Collage, joined by John Lauer, Steve & Marty Doody, and Jeff White. (We had a few different drummers over the years, including good buddy, Bruce Gunnell, and my brother, Ted, among a few others.)
Fact is, Collage got organized as a musical gift to a friend who wanted some ‘different’ music at his wedding. It’s impossible to calculate at this late date how many times our group sang ‘Wedding song,’ ‘First time ever I saw your face,’ and ‘For all we know’ at various and sundry weddings.
Besides the music, another non-purchasable gift I gave to a few friends was a delightful verse from New Wedding, a 1974 book of fresh ideas from Khorem Arisian. I remember being so taken by one prose poem included that I typed up my own copy and filed it for posterity. My copy resurfaced a month or so ago as I went through old files, paring many into the recycle bin.
But not the New Wedding excerpt. I still find this verse about house and home hopeful and full of beauty. This time around I ‘re-typed’ it into my computer for further safe keeping.
At this place in time when old friends are approaching 40+ years of marriage, I offer this fragment from New Wedding one more time to those in love. I wonder how we feel about the verse now that we’ve had our chance to live out many of our wishes and hopes?
from New Wedding
We wish for you a home, not just a place of stone and wood, but an island of sanity and serenity in a frenzied world.
We hope that this home is not just a place of private joy and retreat, but rather serves as a temple wherein the values of your lives are generated and upheld.
We hope that your home stands as a symbol of humans living together in love and peace, seeking truth and demanding social justice.
We hope that your home encompasses the beauty of Nature —
that it has within it the elements of simplicity, exuberance, beauty, silence, color, and a concordance with the rhythms of life.
We wish for you a home with books, and poetry, and music —
a home with all the things which represent the highest striving of women and men.
Finally, we wish that at the end of your lives together you will be able to say these two things to each other:
Because you have loved me you have given me faith in myself.
Because I have seen the good in you, I have received from you a faith in humanity.
***
My wish is the same for you all on this day. ;-)
***
I wanted to mention here, too, that Cindy Lou and I were able to take my mother a week ago to Louisville to meet with one of her dearest and oldest friend.
Both Mom and her friend were classmates at St. Anthony’s school here in Dayton until the fifth grade when, in the middle of the Great Depression, Betty’s father took a job in Cincinnati. Many moves and many children later, both girls have worked hard over decades at staying in touch.
And here they are at age 93 still caring for each other. It is hard to imagine any friendship lasting so long. They’re still cute, too!
I like to call this image ’80 years on…’
Gertrude Zimmer Schaefer and Betty Perry Beckman (1934/2014)
Today’s elder idea: On this Earth Day, I offer a thought from one of America’s foremost Naturalists:
Heaven is under our feet, as well as over our heads.
Henry David Thoreau
No comments:
Post a Comment