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I was not able to post any valentine blog. I am sooo busy adjusting to my new teaching job. It’s in the middle of the semester, so I am now catching up with the lectures, plus it’s my first time to teach! I am currently enjoying it, hehe, somewhat I reminisce my college days everytime I face the classes I handle. Anyways, since it’s still February, I thought it’s not yet late to write about love this “hearts” month.

I wanted to post a not-so-mushy valentine article, and quite happy to find this love letter. Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe (born 1811), the infamous author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, this letter was dedicated to her husband. It was reportedly written eleven years after their wedding. I think the letter is beautiful, where Harriet reflected on the joy and tribulations she and her husband shared. Most of us think that Valentine’s day are for “not-yet-married” lovers. But I think the V-day should be more celebrated by married couples, coz love is truly tested when you’re already husband-and-wife. So here it goes,

January 1, 1847

My Dearest Husband

…I was at that date of marriage a very different being from what I am now and stood in relation to my Heavenly Father in a very different attitude. My whole desire was to live in love, absorbing passionate devotion to one person. Our separation was my first trial — but then came a note of comfort in the hope of being a mother. No creature ever so longed to see the face of a little one or had such a heart full of love to bestow. Here came in trial again sickness, pain, perplexity, constant discouragement — wearing wasting days and nights — a cross, deceitful, unprincipled nurse — husband gone… When you came back you came only to increasing perplexities.

Ah, how little comfort I had in being a mother — how was all that I proposed met and crossed and my may ever hedged up!

…In short, God would teach me that I should make no family be my chief good and portion and bitter as the lesson has been I thank Him for it from my very soul. One might naturally infer that from the union of two both morbidly sensitive and acute, yet in many respects exact opposites — one hasty and impulsive — the other sensitive and brooding — one the very personification of exactness and routine and the other to whom everything of the kind was an irksome effort — from all this what should one infer but some painful friction.

But all this would not after all have done so very much had not Providence as if intent to try us throws upon the heaviest external pressure… but still where you have failed your faults have been to me those of one beloved — of the man who after all would be the choice of my heart still were I to choose — for were I now free I should again love just as I did and again feel that I could give up all to and for you — and if I do not love never can love again with the blind and unwise love with which I married I love quite as truly tho far more wisely…

In reflecting upon our future union — our marriage — the past obstacles to our happiness — it seems to me that they are of two or three kinds. 1st those from physical causes both in you and in me — such on your part as hypochondriac morbid instability for which the only remedy is physical care and attention to the laws of health — and on my part an excess of sensitiveness and of confusion and want of control of mind and memory. This always increases on my part in proportion as a I blamed and found fault with and I hope will decrease with returning health. I hope that we shall both be impressed with a most solemn sense of the importance of a wise and constant attention to the laws of health.

Then in the second place the want of any definite plan of mutual watchfulness, with regard to each other’s improvement, of a definite time and place for doing it with a firm determination to improve and be improved by each other — to confess our faults one to another and pray one for another that we may be healed…

Yours with much love
H.

Yesterday, January 30th, is the fourth death anniversary of my dear mother, ALICIA. It’s been four years, the grief is lesser now and of course the pain passes, but surely our love for her remains. For my Nanay, I know you’re happy wherever you are, this is for you:

ODE TO MY NANAY

Life continues but still empty
I am now home but
you’re not here anymore.

I still miss your voice
and your sunny laughter
I still search your face amongst the crowd.

I am longing for your wings
You left me in void
Which I can never fill up.

Wishing I was with you
During your dying hours
And said my last goodbye.

But I was not able to show
And say how much I love you
For the last time.

My heart is still broken
Coz I was not there
To take care of you.

I am still in pain
‘Coz I didn’t see your pain
Not even once.

My tears keep on falling
‘Coz I didn’t cry enough
‘Coz I didn’t mourn enough.

I saw you in my dreams
You are so beautiful and happy
I am at peace with that somehow.

I LOVE YOU NANAY
These words I failed to say
I ‘ll just blow kisses for you to the wind.

Here is your daughter
Longing for your embrace
Loving you forever.

I would like to share with you two very touching letters.

TAKE 1: The first letter is from Carlo Cruz, whose wife, Leslie, is one of the casualties in the Glorietta blast of October 19. Carlo sent an e-mail to his e-group asking for prayers for Leslie and at the same time sharing his grief. It was already published in inquirer.net and could be circulating in many emails now.

Reading Carlo’s e-mail left me so teary-eyed as he recounted his story of that tragic incident. I couldn’t measure how his heart and dreams were shattered that day, especially when Carlo told all his regrets, and what he should have done to prevent what happened to her. However, I admire him for facing bravely this fate, and openly admitting his grief. My heart’s broken, too, when he wrote, ”Today’s the fourth day. It is still terribly difficult to breathe, let alone wake up realizing that your source of strength, your best friend, doesn’t lie beside you on your bed.”
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I am writing this blog in response to my husband’s comment to my earlier post, Do not be anxious. I’ve been prodding him for the last few days about writing a comment in any of my blogs. Finally yesterday, he wrote a very sweet comment, I was so overwhelmed I told him I don’t know how to answer back. He said it’s alright if I won’t reply to his comment, but I told him I would since if I reply to most of my commentators, then definitely I would answer him back. Still, I couldn’t find the right words to write.

However, words cannot sum up what I wanted to say. I don’t want to be mushy here, but i just wish to vouch that even though we don’t have the perfect marriage, I could say I am contented. Even if we’re not together now, distance is superficial as compared to the knot that binds us one. I might go on and on, ’til I bore everyone, but I reckon all I wanted to say is engulfed to this nice annotation from beliefnet.com. This has been stored in my documents for almost a year now waiting for its due purpose. Why I loved to be married and continuously loving my husband? Here are the reasons why:

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I love reading Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. I don’t know where I got that book, but I had that since college. Black covers, a little tattered, yellowish-brown pages. But I love the drawings in the book, I wish I could sketch the same way. My book is published in June 1945.

I don’t know much about Kahlil Gibran either. All I know is that he was a great poet. So I just googled about his life. According to Wikipedia, Kahlil Gibran (6 January 1883 - 10 April 1931) is a Lebanese-American artist, poet and writer. He was born in Lebanon but raised in the USA. Ooops, same birthday with my brother, January 6th (1981). Since he had had no formal schooling in Lebanon, school officials placed him in a special class for immigrants to learn English. Gibran’s English teacher suggested that he Anglicise the spelling of his name (then Khalil) in order to make it more acceptable to American society. Kahlil Gibran was the result.

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