Spouses

To Bob on your 57th Birthday

Sometimes I crave a moment from the past.
A touch, a glance, a sound, a taste.
And usually I find my mind,
or our collective minds, retrace the memory.
Eagerly position it in the web
that conjoins our shared experience.

But lately, I’ve an unquenched quest
to remember your speech on love.
The one you delivered
at the commencement of our lives together.

The first line alone sticks to my mouth,
repetitively awakening my salivary glands
in gustatory desire:
Love is a shared peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

But without the address itself,
I cannot recall your seventeen-year-old rendition of love.
I only know that years must have etched new meaning.
Nuances that have evolved it beyond initial recognition.
Love can no longer solely be the act of sharing sandwiches,
though intimate and close.

Rather, it is the process
of cultivating the best in people.
Over days and months and years.
In the same way you ready the garden
to plant your saplings and your seeds.

It is the people gardening you do
that multiplies the love.
Sends it in all directions like seeds on a breeze.
To nestle shoots in the most surprising places.

As for me, the seeds you’ve sown have rooted
in my hands, my ears, my uterus, and my tongue.
Blooming into children, songs, and sweet fruit pies.

Every day, I blow some back to you.
So you can plant anew.
With the rest, I people-garden too.
Scattering seeds to renew a spirit.
Refresh a soul.

S.T.T.K.T.
Lynn

September 27, 2005

This poem alludes to Bob’s Upper Dublin High School valedictory speech. The poem was written before I found Bob’s copy of the speech just before we moved to Elkins Park. It was in a box in our basement on Mayo Place. Below is a typed copy.

Bob’s Valedictory Speech

(Upper Dublin, June 1966)

LOVE

Love is a many splendored thing. It is a shared peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an apple on the teacher’s desk, a flower in a young girl’s hair, a penny in a beggar’s cup, a little boy’s prayer. Each of these represents a different facet of that complex emotion that we call love.

At birth, we first encountered love. We came into the world as the physical evidence of our parents’ love. We owed life itself to their love, for we were incapable of caring for ourselves. Yet, the only love that we knew at that early age was self-love. A baby is basically an egotist. Although he is the recipient of loving affection, he gives none in return.

When we first directed our affections towards our parents and other members of our family, we began to outgrow the one-sided love of infancy. The family unit is based on a foundation of loving concern of the members for each other. Thus, as we matured, we discovered love by growing out of self-centeredness.

The first type of love that we found outside the home was friendship. Giving began to replace the childish urge of simply taking. When we began to share with others, we learned the meaning of mutual respect.

Consideration for others led us to another type of love, which we call devotion. Our sense of gratitude and loyalty towards friends and teachers gave us the desire to emulate them. We learned that these individuals expected certain things of us in return for their efforts on our behalf. In order to keep their respect, we had to accept responsibilities. We were gradually drawn out of our narrow little worlds and began to occupy a place in society.

Tonight we are young adults facing the world. Our expanded environment has brought many new influences upon us. In our awakening, we have discovered that pure adoration cannot survive in an adult world, for it lacks the staying power of true love. Love must be realistic. Only when we learn to accept a loved one’s faults as well as his graces will we find the key to mature love. Ultimately, we will seek a partner to whom we will become a source of strength and comfort. The deepest form of human love is achieved when two individuals share one soul.

But higher even than true human love is divine love. Man has developed a devout attachment to G-d in gratitude for His benevolent concern for mankind. Because of His love for us, we were given His Law. In it, we find that it is the Will of the Almighty to have us love our fellow men. This divinely inspired love is often called charity. To give unselfishly of oneself in order to help a stranger, therefore, is to heed the Word of G-d.

It is in this sense that love plays a vital role in today’s world. The American experiment in Democracy will succeed or fail depending on the strength of our love for our nation and for our countrymen. If a kingdom is mismanaged, the monarch may be deposed, but if a democracy decays, the citizens have no one to blame but themselves. Government by the people will survive only if we learn to respect the rights of others.

In the final analysis, the fate of all mankind depends upon love. War, poverty, and disease are the products of ignorance. Knowledge alone cannot defeat ignorance, for it lacks a soul. Only love, spawned by an understanding of the needs and aspirations of others, can bring peace to our troubled world.