Love you for sharing your lemons

love in the Dominican Republic

 My love for you arrived in the Dominican Republic.

You are love

It's true.

signs of love: have you seen one?

Signs of love are popping up on fences around the Bay Area this summer with flashes of i love you, too expected soon in new locales.  A sign of love....have you seen one?  Snap a picture and share the love.  I'd love to see it.

Coffee love

Love.  When you look for it, you'll find it everywhere.

I Spy heART: Mission Edition

Good Monday Morning Mission!

Fence signs from Glen Park are on a visit to the Mission.  Here's the photo as I set out last night to hang the 'pop-up' heART display.

There are 5 fences in the Mission neighborhood in San Francisco (between Dolores & Bryant/15th and 24th Streets) with i love you, too heART.

Spy the heART - win an i love you, too sign. The first person to email me at LoveYou2.org@gmail.com with the location of all 5 'pop up' heART displays, wins an i love you, too wood sign.

There is so much love in the Mission!

P.S.  Everything will be okay.  Yes, it will. 

i love you, dad!

Thank you for teaching me how to change a flat tire, how to jump a car battery, and when to call AAA.

Thank you for taking me with you to Mexico to work in the dental clinic.

Thank you for sending me to Europe to visit my childhood pen pal and get lost on the train.

Thank you for making sandwiches for the masses on top of the cooler.  Everytime I use my mad sandwich making skills like this, I smile and think of you.

Thank you for being my 911 for all dental questions.

Thank you for showing me how to quietly, generously love & give.

Thank you for taking me to your hometown when I was 12.

Thank you for visiting me in every home I've lived in, and moving me several times.

Thank you for throwing the baseball with my kids & sitting on the sidelines at sports events with me. 

Thank you for inspiring me to have fun with whatever is happening around me -  disneyland in the rain with red trashbags as raincoats turns out to be a metaphor for so much of life.

Thank you being silent for a few days and embracing the experience when I painted the car with rustoleum. 

Thank you for driving us and all our friends so many places - dances, the beach & camping trips. 

Thank you for listening.

I love you, Dad. 

The Giver: memories & love

On recommendation from my 12-year-old daughter, I recently read Lois Lowry's The Giver. If you've not read the book and want to....don't let me spoil the amazing narrative.  Stop reading this blog, devour the The Giver and come back for a visit.

In The Giver, Lowry has constructed a perfect world, where everything has order and there is a prescribed plan for everything. While you read, you begin to slowly weigh the benefits and deficits of this imaginary society.  As the story unfolds, I startled with the realization that in The Giver's world individuals don't hold memories and without memories they don't know love and they can not perceive color.

After I'd finished the book, my daughter and I sat at an outside for a summertime lunch and talked about The Giver.  "I was amazed that she linked memories and love. I can't stop thinking about this connection and wondering myself if we have love without the memories" I began.  "Love?  Even more basic, mom.  I was shocked that there was no COLOR. Can you imagine?  No color, no love, no memories.  How were they living?" my daughter replied.  Color, or depth, like love, is as fundamental to humanity as breathing. One needs food. One needs shelter.  Just as basic, is the need we have for love & meaning. 

In The Giver, the main characters have such a deep desire to bring love,community, & connection to this perfect society that they devise and carry out daring and risky plan.

In our own lives, we also devise daring and risky plans to keep memories and color alive.  Loving is brave. It takes courage.  Sometimes it feels perilous. Telling the truth, even when it's all good stuff (You are simply amazing! In all my life, I never met anyone as beautiful as you.) takes a commitment to living life outloud, being graceful, embracing boldness. Perceiving depth and participating in the giving and receiving of love also brings the possibility for pain.  This fear of disappointment, rejection, failure (whatever this means) can hold us back, keep us quiet. 

During the days I read The Giver, my sisters surprised me with a birthday bouquet of memories.  It was a proof (looking for proofs of love...a gem from Gretchen Rubin) of love that I savored over several days opening the envelopes one at a time, often laughing, sometimes crying, a few times blushing. These memories span decades and continents, include plenty of shenanigans and trips since it has been more than 20 years since we all lived in the same state. The memories and this love is weaved into the basic components that make up who I am.  Truly, what a gift to unfold this love, the memories, over and over. 

The bouquet of memories and The Giver have me contemplating what I do to make memories, share memories, and remember memories ("rememories" as my son named them).  I'm behind, but I scrapbook. I write cards and letters. I love to take a photo on the phone and send a text "thinking of you." I'm looking for more ways.....what do you do?

Love in an ice cream

Love.  When you are looking, it's everywhere.

love and peace are possibilities

Love is not a doctrine. Peace is not an international agreement. Love and Peace are beings who live as possibilities in us.
-- Mary Caroline Richards

worlds are forming

"I need to be silent for a while, worlds are forming in my heart."  Meister Eckhart

i knew you'd been here

like a summer ocean breeze whispering warmly over my body on a spring day, i knew you'd been here.

Pay Phone Love

Remembering calling you across the ocean from a pay phone, love.

Today's hot item....

My love for you. Thank you, Berkley!