A poem I like

There's a poem I read in a high school yearbook, that I always loved.  Maybe it's a song.  I don't even know.  It's probably famous.  As a matter of fact I'm sure of it, since I found the parts I couldn't remember in an internet search.  It was one of those things that I always wanted to dedicate to someone when I was younger.  It goes like this...

I love you not only for what you are

but for what I am when I am with you.

I love you not only for what you have made of yourself

but for what you are making of me.

I love you for the part of me that you bring out;

I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart

and passing over all the foolish, weak things that you can't help dimly seeing there,

and for drawing out into the light all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.

I love you because you are helping me to make of the lumber of my life 

not a tavern but a temple

out of the works of my every day

not a reproach but a song.

I love you because you have done more than any creed could have done to make me good

and more than any fate could have done to make me happy.

You have done it without a touch

without a word

without a sign.

You have done it by being yourself.

Perhaps that is what being a friend means after all.

I think of this poem often now.  I'll be flipping through the mail or walking through the aisle at Stop and Shop and suddenly the words will pop into my mind and I'll start to cry.  Just a little.  Just for a moment.  And not because I'm sad.  It's because I'm so overwhelmed with gratitude that I have me this friend and get to spend every day with him.  

And then I pull myself together because it feels a little ridiculous to just start crying spontaneously in the post office or the mall.

I get teased often about this crush that I have on my husband.  My girlfriends often tell me that I love my husband more than anyone they know.  And he and I have talked about it, too.  In the end, we've both agreed that it's perhaps a bit unfair to let my friends have this impression. After all, I'm sure they all love their husbands very much.  We've come to the conclusion that partly it's love and partly it's emotional instability.  On a bad day, I can sing a very different song (or more accurately, spit venom).  It's just that he's the only one who hears it.

But still.  Those good days happen often enough.