Saturday, November 1, 2008

Edelweiss

I have a lovely music box that plays the tune of a sweet song written by Rogers and Hammerstein for the musical, The Sound Of Music. It was a song called Edelweiss. I sang it to each of my children, as I rocked them to sleep as babies, it's melody sweet and soothing, calming and tender.

Edelweiss, Edelweiss, every morning you greet me
Small and white, clean and bright, you look happy to meet me
Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow, bloom and grow forever
Edelweiss, Edelweiss, bless my homeland forever...

In the film, Captain Georg Von Trapp (played by Christopher Plummer) sings this sweet song to his children as they look upon him completely immersed in the moment, full of love and admiration for this man. From that time I have considered Edelweiss as a love song. Singing the tune to my children was an expression of love. The words making me imagine, metaphorically, my children the small blossoms, the small blossoms that needed tender care, needed my tender care. Needing my tending.

Love will do that to a person, fill them with a desire to tend those they care for. It creates a tenderness that comes to life through small loving acts of caring and devotion. Most of us have had this feeling, this experience. Most of us have tended, nurtured another person and not only our children but our love partners as well. It's natural, instinctive really. It is in this tending that the purity of the love we feel is expressed, the emotion given over, the heart opened wide. This is where action speaks louder than any word ever could.

How nice to feel that tending, to be the one tended. To feel the caring, nurturing, touch of another. As children most of us knew this beautiful feeling. But what of the tending, the tender care we feel once we've grown? The tending given us now, as adults, and at this stage in life? It's a stronger touch, a more satisfying feeling certainly. To be handled with such great care, to be encouraged, to be accepted and to be loved as an equal. To feel the warmth of affection, the embrace of respect. To be seen and beheld as something rare, something precious. Something worth holding on to, not tightly, but with open hands that do not confine or limit. To be tended in the truest sense.

To able able to bloom and grow. To bloom and grow even now...

Indeed

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