I love to write. I spend a lot of my time preparing to write by thinking about what to write, which requires inspiration.
And coffee.
So, this morning at the coffee shop I’m sitting there at the window table and right out there on the sidewalk the sun is shining through the letters ‘ve’ which, of course, are the last two letters in my favorite subject anymore: love.
On a whim I hurry outside to take a picture before the sun disappears again and the rain starts.
Again.
I don’t need the rest of the letters in this sign since they don’t spell ‘love.’ And as I am thinking about how to block out whatever the other letters are, a young lady shows up and ties her dog to a post supporting the letters and goes inside the coffee shop to make her order.
The dog sighs after its departing owner, turns around twice, and settles contentedly down on the sidewalk, perfectly blocking the letters I don’t need.
The dog then turns and smiles at me as if saying, ‘this work for you?’
And just like that I have my morning coffee, picture, and inspiration to write about my favorite subject: love.
‘Could you help me with this?’
I sent the picture to the one with whom I have fallen deeply in love and explained to her FaceTime what just happened.
‘Sure,’ she says.
With only the briefest of pauses as she rolls her eyes toward the ceiling (so delightful), and places her index finger thoughtfully across her lips (also delightful), she says what is so absolutely profound.
“What matters most in spelling ‘love’ is not how it starts but how it ends.”
She and I are both in our seventies. We have both lost our spouses to cancer after long marriages. We were both preparing to go solo the rest of the way.
That is, until we found love again.
“Oh, by the way,” she texted back. “Look what I found!”
“‘Ve’ is often used in contractions, informally, for example, ‘We’ve got it.’”
And as to love, “we’ve got it.”
Or rather love has got us.
And in spelling love, what matters most is how it ends.
Love it!!
Ditto.