The stuff of poetry

My husband's story of how the for-no-reason gift came about was nearly as delightful as the gift itself.

"I ducked into the bookstore on the square," he said. "You know, the one with all the vintage books? I scanned the shelf and it just jumped out at me."

"It" is a 1931 copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. (He also scored a tiny volume of 20th century American poetry, publication year 1944.)

We're not big gifts people, he and I. Maybe we convinced ourselves of that in leaner times, or maybe it was the impersonal nature of a few of his gifts. Either way, it was easier to say I didn't want anything than to pretend pearls -- even a very beautiful strand -- were the very thing a tee-shirt-wearing, socially retarded, at-home homeschooling mom like me always wanted, all my life.

Like many a couple before us, we are in transition. To draw on the vernacular, it's time to make it or break it.

So, we're making it.

It's clumsy and awkward sometimes and angry and sullen sometimes, and always, always we're in survival mode. But there are flashes of brilliance.

Enter my husband, with Walt Whitman and a story to boot.

I greatly enjoy the earthy writings of Whitman, Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. I read Leaves of Grass aloud to my unborn firstborn, then joked when he arrived five weeks prematurely that he just couldn't wait to see the world about which Whitman so beautifully wrote.

That $11 worth of dusty books could be a fearsome weapon against the enemies of our family -- apathy, inattention, distraction, fear, anger, ignorance -- is a mind-blowing concept. That Our Hero's spontaneous few minutes of effort on his wife's behalf could banish all uneasiness about Our Heroine's place in the heart of her Forever-Love, a miracle.

Now that's the stuff of poetry!

My husband "took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." (Frost) My husband "knows my face." (Tolkein) He remembers, and sees her in "all that we can be, not what we are." (John Denver)

"That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught I did not hear,
But now the chorus I hear and am elated..." (Whitman)