songs of experience

Today I found out my Rosie’s elementary school principal is leaving at the end of the year and last week our priest announced his retirement [aside: I thought priests couldn't "retire," that it was like marriage to God with no divorce allowed]. And, of course, our family just lost a beloved member when Aunt Louise died. All of these changes - in personnel? - has me feeling so thankful for the people in my life who stay put: the pre-school directors and long-time teachers, the good neighbors and steady librarians, running partners and race directors, my dentist, our doctor, friends who don’t move … or move on, the check-out lady at the grocery store who always asks how my children are doing, my mother-in-law who saves her stale bread to feed the ducks just in case Lizzie comes to visit, my ex- who always returns home to his girls, and my current who, simply, stays … my ever-fixed mark.

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Wm Shakespeare