There are so many love songs, lyrics that touch the heart. Some melodramas, some heartaches, and others about lasting love. What is your favorite love song? Your Kiss Is On My List is the one playing in my head this Valentine’s season. I even found a little Valentine card for Dean with these words. This long Valentine weekend makes for a festive celebration for more than one day. Reservations at the restaurants are slim pickings. So going simple made Dean and I’s evening just right with a carry-out heart-shaped pizza from Papa John’s, chocolates, cookies, and sweet Valentine messages. Practical and thrifty is what we both are becoming in our older age. We just returned from a 9-day trip to the midwestern south last weekend, spent enough on our vacation. More little Valentine gifts were shared with the kids, grandkids, and friends. I hope you shared some love with your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and fur babies.

Preserved Love by Anna Gall   
Subtle, sweet, the simplicity of a stemmed, thornless rose. A single long-stem red rose given for Valentine’s Day. Another for our anniversary. And then another for my birthday. He remembers those special days with a single rose. The color will change from one special day to another. Maybe based on his mood, or mine. Whether red, pink, purple, white, or yellow, the gift is always given with tender love in the simplest form and received with gratitude and mutual love. Sometimes included are the sweet nothings whispered in my ear or scribbled on a note.   
After three or four days admiring the rose’s loveliness, the rose is taken to the basement and pinned upside down from the clothesline to dry. On occasion a bouquet with multiple roses is given to celebrate a special event. Or it might be a sign of truce after a squabble, or forgiveness for something more offensive. Soaking in the kind gesture for three or four days, the whole bouquet is turned upside down, twine wrapped around the stems tight, and hung to dry like the single rose. The preservation of a bouquet takes longer. Its sacredness all the same. Over the years dried rose bouquets gather in vases and dried rose petal potpourri fill mason jars. These floral displays are situated in prominent places in our historic cottage home. One antique ceramic vase given by a beloved brother now gone from this life holds a dozen pinkish buds above a shelf of family photos. Another bouquet of dried purple roses and baby red rosehips grace the guest bedroom near a quart mason jar wrapped in a white netting ribbon filled with withered pinkish rose petals and baby’s breathe. Preserved deep red roses are seated in a short clear glass vase at the base of Mother Mary’s statue. The rose, a symbol of love, romance, beauty, purity, courage, and virtue. Its vibrant color tells the story, its fragile condition continues that story with each petal. Thousands over the years, match the love that will last a thousand years or more. Well beyond this earthly life.  

The baby shower for our granddaughter, Hannah and her fiancé, Jay was a great celebration on Saturday. Held in DeSoto at the CIA Hall, made for a full day with set-up, preps, games, gift opening, and clean-up. The woodland theme was quite cute. Yes, I am going to be a great-grandmother in April. I hope my great-grandson will call me “GG Anna”. It’s much easier to say this name rather than great-grandmother as well it just doesn’t sound as “old”. I’m not in denial, I know I am getting older. My body reminds me of this every day, arthritis, required good eating habits, meds every morning and night, and bedtime about 9:00pm. Speaking of, it’s that time. Tomorrow, I have 75 meals-on-wheels clients to feed and another 20 in the dining room of the senior center I work at. I work a half day every weekday and get my nap in almost every afternoon. A nap has been a regular occasion since my young motherhood and will continue well into my great-grandmother years.