Butterfly Wings and Gentle Breezes

Sometimes when hot July days drive me indoors where cool air and soft chairs greet me with a welcoming nod, I think I might like to be a butterfly.  What would that be like?  I have lingered in my flower garden for long minutes waiting for one of these beautiful gifts from Nature to light near enough so I can take its picture.  I observe their long tongues probing into the inner sweetness of the blooms.  Antennae gracefully feeling for purchase on the stem, they move with ease over each blossom, searching for nectar.  Wings folded neatly at rest, and then lifting them to flutter to the next offering nearby.

Gentle breezes make the flowers move in the wind but the butterfly holds on until it has drunk its fill.  If  the wind blows too strong the butterfly just flies away to a protective tree branch and waits until conditions improve.  So fragile.   So light.  What must it be like to be able to float on the gentle breezes and move with butterfly wings?

48

This month marks the 48th year that Andy and I have been married.  A long time.  But a short one too.  Looking through my wedding pictures I laugh as I remember that day.  It was hot for summer in New Hampshire.  I think it might have been 78 or 79 in the shade.  Everyone was fanning and thinking cool thoughts while they waited in the little 1800's church in Eaton Center.  All the windows were open as I recall.  And the minister was sweating too.  It was his first wedding.  

Andy and I were cool as cucumbers.  

Later when the cake had been cut and served, sandwiches eaten and coffee and punch passed around, we retired to the living room of our summer home on Horse Leg Road to open gifts.  Andy and I had surprised our families by deciding to get married that summer after I graduated from college.  He was in Maine, prospecting for asbestos for Johns-Manville.  I was being trained in Tempe, Arizona to be a VISTA volunteer to the Navajo nation...midway through my language training when Andy phoned me and asked me to marry him.  Of course I said yes.  That was in mid-June.  We were married in mid-July.  No problem for us.  But thinking back on it, I can only imagine what a scurry this sent our families into.  A wedding in a month.  Sure, we can do that?

I love this picture.  I am unwrapping what Andy and I fondly call the 'wedding blanket'.  It was pink, thermal weave, light weight.  My Aunt Pearl and Uncle Dave gave it to us.   From JC Penneys, it withstood the test of time.  I think the last I saw it Nina was moving to California and it was packed with her bedding.  You couldn't wear that blanket out.

And isn't that the perfect metaphor for my marriage?  Tough.  Soft.  Made to last.  Forty-eight years and counting.  Couldn't be happier.