Honey, I’m sorry I didn’t write you yesterday or Friday.  Friday, we had to pack all our work up to take home, so that we can try not to get each other sick with this terrible virus.  By the time I went to the doctor (it turns out, my ankle’s broken, not sprained) and the grocery (see: ankle broken), and fixed dinner (chicken, was it?), all I had left in me was sleep.

Then yesterday, I made you something in the cloudy afternoon, with some rocks I have been pondering for a little while.  But it takes some time to see my way through to the right picture.  (Also, I might have been watching Antiques Roadshow for a little longer than is really necessary.)

So, about these rocks. My friend gave me the red ones, from a big bucket of river stones he collected.  (Because I’m the sort of person who has friends with treasure buckets full of rocks.) They are from somewhere called the Brule River – one of these ancient waterways Up North in Wisconsin, where people go to their cabins and pretend to fish between naps. (Or so I assume.  I have never seen this Mysterious Realm with my own eyes).  I scrounged the small stones from the pedestrian path through the Pheasant Branch Conservancy – 2 chunks of petrified wood and a bit of quartzite.

Is the heart obvious enough?  No matter how I put them together, these incongruous shapes – rough and smooth, sharp and worn – seemed to fit into a heart.  I know that’s improbable.  It must have something to do with me – eye of the beholder or wishfulness.  It takes so much discipline to see what’s right in front of me. I’m rarely sure if anyone else sees what I see.

But really, the light just chose it’s time – and this was how the pieces had fallen into place.  The light in the heart is what matters.  That’s how you see that things are beautiful, and the sense they make, exactly as they are right now.  So I kept this one, even if the heart isn’t obvious.  The light was everywhere.

I’ll write tomorrow, dear.  Sleep tight.