The Passionate Shepherd To His Love
With apologies to Christopher Marlowe, 1592

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and vallies, dales and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And late at night, we will read together ,
You, your spy thrillers and me, Quiltmaker,
Then join in snoring: a guy and his gal,
Two melodious birds singing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And quilts to cover freezing toes-es,
While nightly you return, a tired fellow
And we join together, eating dinner on the patio.

Still other nights, you slip in ear-buds,
Watching murder mysteries, while the quilting continues;
An if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each August-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

************************

In honor of our anniversary this month, when Dave married me. . .  and my four children.  The reception was held two weeks after our marriage and after our honeymoon to Austria.  My mother and father watched my four children while we honeymooned, then drove the car from Utah to California to meet up with us.  I owe them big time.

Jet-lagged, I went to the florist’s on the afternoon of the reception to pick up my bouquet, but they’d made the wrong one.  I refused to purchase it, and they promised me the right one this time.  I went home and curled my hair, over-curling my bangs so I looked like I was in fourth grade, then went back to the florist’s.  I hated my hair, but I liked the new bouquet.

My husband’s brother took the photos at our reception; we gave him five rolls of film, but only one turned out as he’d loaded them incorrectly in the camera (one of the photos is above).  We had a lovely party with good friends and family, loaded all the gifts in our car, drove home, unloaded them, then stayed up opening gifts, drinking Martinelli’s after getting the three younger children in bed.  At 11:00 p.m. Dave got back in the car to pick up the oldest child from a church dance, remarking as he came home that he bet he was about the only groom that had to pick up a teenager from a dance on the night of his wedding reception.

We laughed, fit ourselves to each other, and twenty-four years later, we are still here. Like the wooing swain in Marlowe’s poem,  I did go with him and become his love, his wife, his partner and his resident quilter and to borrow another poet’s line: that has made all the difference.