MUCH LOVE

    Good friends sometimes close a letter with “much love”, and just now, on another frozen, snowbound day in Mystic, I see much love all around me. I see it in my wife’s purple orchids carrying themselves with great grace on a window shelf near where I’m typing. They were set there months ago because Delycia does more loving than anyone I know, and now the blossoms are beautifying both our home and the snowy scene outside the window. I see love, too, in the pendulum clock hanging on the wall behind me – a clock made, I’ll bet, by craftsmen who loved their labor, loved setting the parts in their proper places so the chimes would reliably sing their small song every fifteen minutes. When you love your work, the love lives on in your creations, and this is true even for the cold, old streets of our town which have been dependably plowed, over and over this winter, by drivers who do their work with precision, and perhaps (I hope) with some pride. They may not see it this way, but I see much love in what they have done for all of us, allowing us to move about town and take this fairly wild winter in stride, and maybe even in occasional joyfulness.