Abundance
We are older, somewhat older than today. There you are, loved by life and me and the ocean breeze, hair dancing playfully about, rapt in thought—about a time, or a place—I know not what. Looking altogether like an oracle divining wisdom from the whispers of an errant wind.
As always, you dazzle in the simplest attire: your sheer white pants make a half-hearted attempt at disguising the lovely shape of your legs. A peach linen top drapes loosely from your shoulders, buttoned just high enough for modesty, but low enough to entice. This has been, and ever will be, your forté: graceful, effortless, understated beauty. Even after years together, you still can’t fathom the immense sway your smile, your line, your touch have over me. How God bestowed so much humility upon such a stunning, radiant being, I’ll never know.
Quietly, I kiss you while you sleep and steal away at dawn for a leisurely Sunday ride. What I've never shared is how lonely the ride out feels, for it runs against my nature to leave you behind. It lingers on my mind the first few miles, until a breath of wildflower wafts across the highway, and I am lost, hopelessly lost—to the hills, to the sea, to the forests and the fields—giggling with delight as I roar across the thundering immediacy of Now.
The seduction lasts a while, as Mother Nature draws me down this lane or that, over that hill or the next, until something lovely reminds me slowly, unmistakably, of you. And the moment I feel it, I reign in my machine and begin the journey home, driven onward, ever onward, by the thought of your voice, your touch, your lips, your smile. And before you know it, before the morning rays have kissed the flower-boxes gracing our porch, I rumble in on a cloud of dust and a gallop of exhaust up the gravel pathway that leads to our cottage.
I never tire of that first glimpse of you, tiptoeing about the porch with a watering can, or better yet, pulling up short and leaping off the moment I catch you dozing in the yard. Then, ever so quietly, I pad up to you—lost in delicious slumber, nestled in the palm of a rope hammock—and kiss you gently awake, until your eyes meet mine with that incomparable, immutable smile: a smile that signals, now and forever, that I am home. In those moments, I realize how incredibly rich we are in our humble white abode by the pale blue sea. For long ago, we chose joy over money, and have been awash in Love’s simple grace, her boundless abundance, ever since.
Today’s approach is deliciously different: there you are, trying to contain a smile from behind a book, caught in exquisite repose on a chaise. And beside you, a fresh pitcher of homemade tea, hot off the stove, ice still crackling from the stress of the boil. The sugar is melting and the lemon's seeping fast. I take up the lounge next to you, lean over for a kiss, and know in an instant, that I am precisely where I wish to be in all the universe, amid the sunshine, the flowers, the saline breeze, the swell and retreat of a summer tide, and the never-ending enchantment of you.