Author: Eddie

Have I told you lately that I love you? Sometimes, I forget to say the words. You are my candle in the night. Your smile lights up the whole room. You refuse to hide your light under a bushel.

I know that words of affirmation are your love language, but I forget to say the words. We are better together. You calm me when we dodge and dart through downtown Detroit traffic. You use my love offering of tomatoes, cukes, okra and squash without complaining. You encourage (not shame) me into weighing in every week at Weight Watchers. You count my pills. You keep the books and sit by my side at Dr. Rob’s Garden at the Waleska Farmers’ Market. You help me minister to my Methodist Men. But, have I told you?

You cuddle me when I am blue. You expect me to be a better man than I am. Your unconditional love picks me up when I fall. You love me when I do not love myself. Sylvia, you are the best. You have allowed me to live out the fantasy. I have the thoughts; I have the feelings. It is time that I told you.

Love – Eddie Bert

Have you remembered  to say the words?

What is your love language? Your mate’s?

Darling Sylvia,

I trust you; you have my back. You support me, but my taking your input requires you to read what I need and what I can accept. You have learned to match your support to my needs. You somehow divine when I need a hug and when I need a kick in the ass. You know when to listen to my words and when to listen to my heart. You are my safe space, my cheerleader, and my partner.

Your support makes safe space for me. You get me with my insecurities. You truly know I am an introvert in noisy clothing. My intuitions and roles I choose can take me outside of my comfort zone. The non-verbal three-year-old in me prefers to crawl back behind Mom’s corner china-closet. You recognize my tells, and I feel your support as I work myself through situations. You trust the end even if my process is sometimes uncomfortable for you.

Your support helps me face my fears. You hold my hand for prostate cancer appointments. You make me feel safer as I hear scary things. You allow me to voice my fears to you while remaining an “adult,” if I have to.

Your support is affirming in much more fun ways, too. You cheer on my commitments in the community. You stir grits at dawn while I fix breakfast to haul to church for the Methodist Men. You share the hospitality of our home with “my” groups of men and students.

You are a supportive partner with “my” hobby/business cut flower industry. I crave your “ooh—ahhhs” over what is blooming in the garden. At market, we share the work and the loveseat. You excel in community building. After market, we collapse together in our blue chair and rehash all the miracles of the day.

Some 58 years ago, I came back to the dorm from Lumberjack Park amazed that you loved me more than I loved myself. Sylvia, you are a good person, a loving mother and grandma, but you are my lover and my best friend. I won the most important lottery of all.

Love you.    Eddie B.

Darling Sylvia,

Grace notes are musical ornaments. I was introduced to bagpipe grace notes during the fall of 1970 by Charlie Russell, lead piper in Saint Paul’s Irish Pipe Band.  He taught me how to use my right pinky to flit across the bottom hole of my chanter, adding  grace notes to Scotland the Brave. The presence of grace notes elevates the pipe’s playing above the ordinary. In our 54 years of marriage, I know that it is the grace notes (little things, actions, and habits) that take our love above the treble clef.

Grace notes, intentionally made to honor you, me, and our we, make all the difference. We have learned to name and honor the intentional grace notes that nourish us. My grace notes to you include not being afraid to tell you I love you. I learned to say I am wrong (out loud) and that I am truly sorry that I hurt you. I gladly apply Aspercreme to your beautiful body before you go to sleep.  The last words I say to you at night are, “I love you, and I am the luckiest man in the world.” I am so glad we met at Alma College. I make gestures to tell you that you count.  I pick up my clothes–and put them into the washer. I take the garbage out on Sunday night. I open car doors, set a pretty table (flowers, wine glasses, and scented candles), and hold you in my arms when you are missing your dad or mom. I try desperately to be thoughtful because I honor and cherish the person you are.

Your grace notes for me include putting my pills together and reminding me to take them. You remind me when the remote check of my pacemaker is due. You take me on Harbor Freight dates and buy drill presses and tool boxes. You lay out clothes for me to wear so that I will look hot for an old guy.  You cut my hair and trim my mustache.  You let me not be strong. I can cry and not be embarrassed. You laugh at my jokes and buy me beer even though the taste of it disgusts you. You keep the books and do the taxes. You remind me when I am over the speed limit where the police in Waleska hide.

We both play grace notes to our we. They include holding hands in church and doing our Upper Room together after breakfast, folding and putting away laundry, and sitting side by side on our love seat at the Waleska Farmers’ Market. We shop together at Aldi for cheap wine. We fast together before early morning blood draws. We offer extra ears at way too many joint medical appointments.  We do Weight Watchers together.  We make sure we get our two-night-away adventures every three months and celebrate them on the refrigerator Growth Plan. I am so glad we found each other.

Love, Your Lover Bert

What are the grace notes in your home? How do you and your mate honor each other and grow your joint we?

Darling Sylvia,

Returning home from our Marriage Getaway at Hilton Head, I am full of feelings; I feel… I feel confident that in high tides and in the inevitable low tides, I will be all right as long as you are by my side.

When I am with you, I feel alive. Your presence by my side expands my universe. You rock my world. You let me share your viewpoint. When you share what you see, I become aware of the beauty around me, the daffodils in the ditch, the golden jasmine in the forest canopy and the red haze of the maples in the swamp.

Your presence in my life fills my senses like the sweet fragrance of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Whenever I see your smiling face, my world becomes a brighter and warmer place. You light up my world.

When you lay your head on my shoulder and I look down into the depths of your eyes, I feel at peace. When you reach out and touch my face, my skin tingles. When you pet my hair, my pacemaker skips a beat.

As we sleep. the heat of your back against mine calms my very busy mind. You warm my soul. You bring love into my life. You are my lover and my best friend.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Your Lover Bert

What thoughts will you share with your partner today?

Where do you have highs in low places?

Darling Sylvia, We are better together. We are like a hot cup of Earl Grey tea with four drops of honey better. You have helped me to learn the lost art of speaking for self. When needed, you wave your hand in the air and ask to stop the action long enough to have a couple dialogue. If it is possible, we sit down knee to knee, hand to hand, and heart to heart. In assuming the dialogue position, both of us honor the we that we cherish.

The knee-to-knee dialogue position forces me to look directly into your beautiful blue eyes and remember that the we is what both of us cherish.  The trust found in that position helps us do this marriage thing better. We have a body memory of how to behave with each other in the dialogue position. Over the years, we have had many caring and helpful conversations in this space. The knee to knee has given us a safe place through the many highs and lows that life together has brought.

Now, after years of practice using the dialogue position, I can acknowledge that I have feelings that at one time I did not know existed. Mad, sad and glad were once the only words in my feelings vocabulary. With your help, that list  has expanded exponentially; go figure. Using I messages keeps me honest and encourages me to bring to the dialogue what I want with a clear responsibility to honor the we. We are better together.

Roses are red and violets are blue, Angels in heaven know I love you.

Eddie Bert

Darling Sylvia, I was shocked. The electrical impulse jumped from the garden fence through my elbow to the wet ground below. I blinked, dismissed it, and once again touched my elbow to the fence. This time my whole body flinched. It is a good thing I have a Ph. D., or I would have felt silly. I had unlatched the gate without touching the wires and neglected to turn off the electric fence. A month later, my pacemaker readout confirmed that on April 27 at 10:17, I had two heart episodes, 6 seconds apart. My heart rate hit 86 and, with the second jolt, jumped to 286 beats per minute. Shocked.

The fence shocked me, but you shock (astonish) me more often than I like to admit. You keep learning new stuff.  I am in awe of the way you organize our social media connections with family, friends, and our growing farmers’ market community. You have always been a good finder, but you only get better at finding things like my glasses, truck keys, kids’ shoes, etc. etc. I have known grandkids to call you long distance to be walked through where they might find their glasses. I am shocked and sometimes dismayed at the rapidity with which you can fact check my b.s. on Google.

After 53 years of marriage, I am still discovering who you are. I knew who you were, but you keep changing, becoming someone new and even more exciting. I am shocked when I realize that I am 75 years old, and you still make my saliva flow. I am shocked that you are still interested in me. I am shocked that you still have the expectation that I can become a better man. You and God are not finished with me yet. I am shocked and delighted that our love is becoming even stronger.

Love you. Eddie B.

Who was I?/ Who were you?/Who were we?

What expectations do I/you/we have for our future?

Still waters run deep. This 75-year-old ex-professor taught limnology too many times. When I failed to respond, you repeated top to bottom the information that the orchids in the kitchen were wilting and needed to be returned to the greenhouse to be resuscitated.  The bronze and white orchids had been brought to you as a love gift with Precious Sylvia heart, a Better Marriages token.  You had appreciated my gesture and wanted to save the orchids from the unusual low humidity we were experiencing.  You were concerned and wanted to honor the love the orchids represented.

We are opposites, you a joy filled extrovert and me, an often grumpy old introvert.  Most of the time, the difference brings joy, but, sometimes, it is a challenge.  This time, our oppositeness was a challenge. In my mind, I agreed with the information and request you presented. In real time, you thought that I had not heard you, in part because of my recent bout of deafness caused by my spring buildup of ear wax.

You repeated your message top to bottom.  This time, the delivery was a little louder.  Then, when I didn’t respond, you believed I had something deep going on in my head or had the brass to ignore your concern.  The tone with which you delivered the third top to bottom rendition of your message sent shivers down my spine.

I heard and agreed with you completely the first time you softly gave me the message of your concern. I had failed to give you any verbal feedback.  You would have been satisfied with a sub-verbal male grunt of acknowledgement.  At the moment you started the second repetition of your concern, I had something deep going on, but it had nothing to do with you or the orchids. I was experiencing a physical need brought about by my fourth cup of morning coffee. I was sitting in the comfortable but very low kitchen chair and was having an unstable elder moment getting my butt out of the chair to make the run to the bathroom.  When I heard the third beginning of your concern for the orchids, I knew I was in trouble.

You have my solemn promise that when you message me in the future, I will make some kind of response.  I love you, and I will acknowledge your worth.  The emphasis with which you delivered the third repetition put the fear of God in Eddie Bert.  I’m sorry. My still waters were not deep; they were stupid.

Love, Eddie

Dearest Sylvia:

As we were taking down the tree this morning, I was reminded of Tevye, the Papa in Fiddler on the Roof. He was frustrated with the changes in tradition. I don’t have to worry about that problem because you will see that we “do it right.” I love the way our Christmases have evolved from the family traditions of our families of origin and include elements we have chosen together over the years. Today, we take down the tree now not-so-fresh tree, and sweep up needles because Robertsons grew trees and made wreaths and roping. We have four dwindling poinsettias dropping bracts because Robertsons decorated Michelsen Memorial and St. Mary’s every Christmas. The Dad Rutledge yule log has burned yet another dozen red candles to nubs after its sixty-somethingth Christmas. The ornaments remind us of our children and grandchildren and of many family adventures, from seals to armadillos. Decorations go to the attic, but Christmas stays in our hearts. At this house, Christmas is a season not a day.  We have a certain way of doing things, traditions, and I better not cross Grandma Sylvia if I know what’s good for me; and I do know what is good for me.

There is a traditional pace at which we choose to celebrate the season. You see that we don’t begin decorating until after Thanksgiving. We decorate gradually, and we take down gradually. The tree never comes down until after New Years and the lights not until Charity’s birthday, February 2. The wreath blesses the porch until Valentine’s Day. The “botanically correct” Christmas dishes wear roses and holly until then, too.

We have the tradition of observing family rituals during this season. We have learned to keep the important elements and flex to changes in family needs. We celebrate Advent during the four weeks preceding Christmas. It may not be on Sunday, but when we can gather for a supper or dessert, we light candles, sing, laugh and love. I purr when the seventeen-year-old granddaughter says, “I’m so glad we have this tradition.”  We include cats, granddogs, boyfriends, and Christmas parades with our marching band kids. After candlelight on Christmas Eve, we gather friends and family for the Christmas Feast. And we are surprised by “We Three Kings” played on the bassoon. Cinnamon rolls grace the lovely chaos of Christmas morning. And the we-two quiet is precious when family departs. You and I make sure we get our twosome time in front of the fire. I love the way we celebrate this blessed season. Thank for being our keeper of the flame. I love you.

Eddie

Darling Sylvia,

“Deliver the letter, the sooner the better.”  In a time long ago, in a northern Michigan town called Grayling, a twenty-year-old Eddie Bert was driving home after work from a summer job with the USGS.  The point was to get to the mailbox before his dragon lady mother (Ruth Elizabeth) snagged the letter from you.  Your letters were special.  They looked different, felt different, and smelled wonderfully like you.

It was a far away and ancient time when phones were rotary, postage was six cents, and Bill Gates had not yet been potty trained.  The first had come on June 12, 1967. It was the summer between our sophomore and junior year at Alma College.  You were two hundred and seventy-eight miles away in Grosse Pointe Park and I was exiled in the northwoods of Crawford County.  I snatched the letter from Mom’s grasp and went to my den to treasure it.

          I read your letter and then responded.  The letter meant everything.  We were an item.  I wrote and received twice and sometime three times a week that and the following summer. I found the box containing both your letters and mine last week in the closet.  I really did not remember that you saved them.  Fifty-five years of loving you, documented in a Rapallo shoebox. Years ago in an old trunk I discovered Dad’s 1936 letters to Mom. He was in the northwoods of Michigan at Fife Lake CCC Camp, and she was in Mars Hill, Maine.

          Writing a love letter is an ancient art form.  It takes a lot more thought than a tweet or a text.  It starts with chit-chat; I am on the porch, the sun is shining, and I was dreaming of you.  After the introduction, I proceeded to hopes and dreams (what are my values things). The third paragraph was filled with the scary things called feelings.  You were teaching me that I actually did have feelings. The fourth paragraph got mushy; How much I wanted to hold you in my arms at that moment and show my love to you.

          Last week, I sat down to revive the art and wrote you seven days in a row.  Because postage is fifty-five cents for one ounce first class, I left them at your breakfast plate.  I loved you then and love you even more fifty-five years later.

Love – Eddie Bert