Le Temps Passe

Dear Avid Reader,

I know it exists. LOVE. It is in the little things. It passes like time.

Last year in the month of February, I rode the ALL ABOARD THE Valen-TRAIN! from my village to the city. On each seat was placed, in a precise manner, a Valentine with a cartoon image of a Metra train engine dressed in red heart wheels and a red heart of steam. The message: “Thank you Metra riders for weathering the storms with us.” On the backside, a pair of stick figured red hearts skipped hand in hand with blushing smiles underneath a smiling cloud snowing hearts over them.

The year before the Valen-TRAIN!, my loyal four-pawed girl, Kona, not yet two years old, snuggled up to me all day long every day I was home all day long. She wouldn’t leave my side. Then and now, she can’t kiss me enough; hold hands with me enough; greet me each time I enter a room as if it is the first time she’s laid admiring eyes on me.

The year before the snuggles, I pulled my grandmother’s bowl from the hutch and felt six-years-old again. Chipped and sliced with a long crack and a faded pattern of peacock feathers, it is the bowl she placed filled with water on her kitchen table, Then, with an olive oiled pinky finger, made the sign of the cross over the water and studied how the four oil drops mixed with the water. All the while, the secret malocchio prayers escaped the narrow gap of her lips in a lisped whistled Calabrian dialect. My mother and I stood at her side in silence. Always, my mother and me.

And the year before the throwback to the superstitious malocchio ritual, I made the always pleasing pasta dish: spaghetti with a simple red sauce that consists of a good olive oil—good meaning it is straight from the verdant hills of Italy and peppers my throat so much that I cough and the burn transports to my nostrils which makes me sneeze—two cloves of chopped garlic, Campari tomatoes cut in fourths, three grinds of salt, two grinds of black pepper, a handful of healthy basil leaves sliced, and a long shower of grated Parmigiano Reggiano. My mother would have added a pinch of red chili flakes. I sometimes do. Not this time.

The year before the spaghetti in homemade sauce, I traveled to Atlanta and for the first time, stayed in a Moxy Hotel. Fun, this hotel has it. Personality, this hotel shows it. In my room, the decorative bed pillow read: I WOKE UP LIKE THIS. A simple statement that has more impact than we realize. The morning after my first sleep, in Piedmont Park under gray skies, I witnessed romance through a bended knee engagement in action and the remains of thoughtfully placed red rose petals of another. Creamy white MARRY ME DEE light up letters and several lighted pillar candles in patina lanterns accented the lake. Even the single Muscovy duck standing on the edge of the sidewalk quacked up a conversation about the presence of love.

The year before MARRY ME DEE, I wandered through The Art Institute of Chicago in search of a painting and a regret on my mind. I had wanted to take my mother to the museum one last time before it was too late, before it was too difficult to bring her to Chicago. Since her early twenties, the museum was one of her favorite places to visit when in the city and she took me often as I grew up. All I wished was for one more time; to maneuver her wheelchair through the exhibition halls, the blanket crocheted in three shades of pink by her mother across her lap and the caregiver’s hands resting from work and her eyes resting on something other than the mood of Alzheimer’s, until we reached William Penhallow Henderson’s painting, Ready for the Fiesta. All I wished was to place ourselves before this piece of art and behold it. All I wished was to stand together before the landscape of Santa Fe, the colorful dress, the rosy cheeked face, the grey hair, the clay pottery. And be. As she, her caregiver and I viewed the composition, all I wished was to say to my mother, “This is us.” And to the caregiver, “Because of you, this is us.” But I had waited too long. Alzheimer’s was in full gear. Even with the help of one of her caregivers, it was a challenge to take my mother on this excursion. With nostalgia and the desire to see the painting, I couldn’t find it. I learned it was off exhibit.

The year before searching for Ready for the Fiesta, I drove to my mother’s home for a Galentine’s Day breakfast party with her, and two of the women from Team Caterina, my mother’s caregiving team. Upon arrival, I walked into her kitchen with a dozen hot pink roses to a table set with red plaid place mats centered with a vase filled with one half dozen tall red roses and a homemade breakfast of scrambled eggs and link sausages with vanilla yogurt and berries. Placed at each place setting was a small heart shaped box of See’s chocolates, my mother’s favorite. That morning, I walked into love by way of my mother’s caregiving village built on devotion, generosity, and joy.

The year before the Galentine’s Day breakfast party, I sat at a table for one in the window of Goddess and the Baker on Randolph Street drinking a latte and eating avocado toast. The same way I sat, a few days ago, in Petterino’s Pasticceria further up Randolph savoring each bite of a pancetta cinnamon roll, a latte cooling. As an eclectic playlist of music transports me, within an hour, to Spain and Italy and France, I enjoy tables for one with a view of love in everyday life traveling past. It is where I see love walk by in a solo lavender velvet coat, a pair of burgundy ties, a winter white nosegay for a teacher, a boutonnière and posy of pink pastel ranunculus and baby’s breath headed to the courthouse, a trio of magenta heart-shaped mylar balloons twirling in the wind, an extra pep in red retro high tops, an assortment of ribbon tied gift bags filled with conversation hearts, a handmade paperweight, a handwritten card, the intention to offer the gift of time.

Le temps passe. Time passes. As does February. As does the opportunity to love.

Every day is a beginning. Rush slowly and be surprised.

Marie