Dear Valentine

[Sky, San Francisco, fall 2008.]

Baby, you are softness and light, you are memory swirled around like caramel in chocolate ice cream, you are sunsets over the Pacific Ocean in lavender and light blue, you are the first gulp of water after filling the bottle up from the mountain stream, you are an apple on the first day of fall crisp and clean, and you are sitting by the fire, cool breeze gently blowing, as night falls all around.

Yes, you are all these things, and you are spaghetti dinners with red sauce in the old hotel, you are late spring by the horse fields, you are afternoons at the library and morning cups of tea, you are late mornings seeking whales on Tomales Bay and afternoons swimming off of Heart’s Desire, you are Armstrong Woods after a cold frost, ice dripping from the ferns.

The dream of you — my dream of you — is colored by fading roses and crisp bay leaves, the cool blue of a summer sky above the deepest ocean. It is swept through by the sweetest of breezes, rustling pine trees on the high mountain-tops, swirling light and particle into a spinning mass set down gently, so gently, into my waiting hands.

(And so I will hold it well, then,’ til you come to claim it again.)

Happy Valentine’s.

[Renee’s birthday cake, February 2009.]

Love is

– Dinner parties with old and new pals
– Friends visiting you just because
– New babies arriving for so many people I know in the next few months
– Red velvet cake
– Sunny days
– Rainy days, to fill up the reservoirs
– A beach in wind and fog
– Doggie friends
– Weekends up north
– Weekends in town

– Up in the Old Hotel
– Girlfriends who just know
– Making your mom’s recipes and having your friends love them
– J. Steinbeck
– Brie-based mac and cheese
– Robbie Robertson
– Trips to Europe
– Late nights with wine and cheese
– Dad’s birthday (on the 14th)
– Best friends
– Greece and the Med

– Brothers
– Clementines
– California
– Playing the piano again after too long
– You

Hope your day is just lovely.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
~ Mary Oliver