“Three windbells cool the humid summertime;
Clashing their shrilly sweet metallic chime.”
—A Chime of Windbells
This season always reminds me of falling in love with my husband. When we were first dating, we would take his dog, Maggie, for long walks through the dark, tree-lined streets–and down to the river–on warm summer nights. The humid air, the lightning bugs, the tinkling of people’s wind chimes filled me with the lightest feelings of joy and possibility. Later, lying in bed and listening to the night sounds through his open window, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be anywhere else but right there with him.
Now here we are, all these years later, with a house and two children. We were talking last night about whether people, after years of marriage, can still feel the way they did when they first fell in love. I was thinking it would be so nice if they could hold on to some of that passion and possibility forever; I think Mark was making the case that this wasn’t very realistic, given that people evolve throughout time. I guess he’s right that so many things can clutter the years of a marriage and make it more complicated than it ever was in the beginning. People lose sight of each other sometimes.
Maybe it’s time to hang some wind chimes.