Spring brings thoughts of roses.

Yesterday I was shuffling through some old papers, organizing an odds-and-ends drawer where I sometimes put things I planned to handle later.
I came across an envelope that I had almost forgotten about. I opened it with the expectation of finding some old birthday and Father’s Day cards from any of my four children.

As I carefully opened the flap, a very dried up rose petal fluttered to the floor in a hundred pieces. It came from inside a card I had placed there many years ago. Instead of immediately opening the card I tried to remember the circumstances….and the lady who gave it to me.

Of course I remember the gal. We had met in a personal development seminar and found ourselves looking for answers to similar life questions. As a group, we explored issues of relationship, making a difference in our community, and other common topics. The first time I fumbled around the words of asking her to dinner, just the two of us, she laughed and asked, “Is this like a date?” Yep, the first date of a two-year amazing closeness that we shared.

That was so long ago, and yet it doesn’t seem that long, as I carefully picked up the broken pieces of that little rose. Our time together, now slowly coming alive, was filling my mind with the dancing, traveling, the golfing, those 2 a.m. phone calls when she needed a shoulder, and……yeah, there was something in the mix that we both didn’t quite understand. Hm. The mystery of love? Of relationship?

We had often found and given each other funny little cards of friendship and love, so I was excited to have found this card in which the flower was pressed. However, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read the note just yet.

I do remember the flower because it was the only time she sent one, with a note……

“Rich, it is very important that you know how much you mean to me, but I feel……”

Shortly after that, we both seemed to suddenly get very busy with life and had no time for anything personal. Well, you know how it always seems to go this way.

I was so in love with this gal! In my hesitation to read the card, I realize that I still am. But this is not a tragedy. The tragedy might be to think we need to ‘fall out of love’! I don’t think we ever stop loving someone, if we have truly loved. Continuing to love someone means we are open to giving and receiving love.

And my time together with my lady? Well, someone once said that we do not so much remember our past as we invent it.

So, spring is in the air…or love is in the air! We need to love and make up so much history that we are continuously ecstatic! That would matter a lot!

Rich