I wrote a few months ago about a wonderful Christmas Tree that arrived at YES Gallery from a sale at a house in Hoboken. It had belonged to a couple who I had met a few times because I always admired their outdoor displays in their screened in porch, and whenever I saw them I always said hello and thanked them for making such a beautiful place for people who walked by to enjoy. The tree is made of recycled wood pieces, and there is a story behind where the wood came from although I don't remember it now. When I had admired it one day they'd told me about it, and I think it had been made by an Artist, though I'm not sure. Whoever had made it and wherever the wood came from, there's something about it that is so special. It reminds me of things that my Mother always liked and she had a smaller version of something similar on her tabletop in recent years.
The tree was such a wonderful Christmas Tree, and because I don't really have a place to store it and I don't really want to ever put it somewhere where it can't be seen, I decided to decorate it year round in some way. After Christmas and the New Year celebrations, I began to take down my ornaments that were on the tree and in the windows of YES Gallery, but I left a few things on the tree that could become decorations for Valentine's Day. The vintage chandelier crystals I'd hung on the tree stayed, and the little white fairy lights too. And then I began to make Valentine's Day hearts from a roll of red foil Christmas wrapping paper that someone in my neighborhood had put out brand new and still in its protective plastic for recycling one night. When I began making the hearts, I planned to put them in the windows on the tree branches that are there which I did, and after cutting them out I noticed that the red foil that was left from cutting the heart shapes was something that could hang beautifully on my recycled wood tree. The inner shape was a heart, and the red foil paper is silver on one side, so when the pieces are hung on the tree branches, they make the whole tree glow with beautiful dangling red designs that look like hearts inside an open space.
As I began to decorate for Valentine's Day and fill the windows and the tree branches with red foil hearts and paper and other glowing and lovely red decorations, I thought about how important it is to remember that Love really is the answer. So often we think of Valentine's Day as a time for romance and it is, but it is also a day when we can be reminded that love is a powerful force for good in the world. It doesn't always feel easy to love, as we get older and have experiences that make us feel like sometimes our love is not understood or is taken for granted, but love is never wasted, and opening our hearts to saying yes to love will not only bring more love into our lives but will also keep us feeling joyful and able to feel young at heart and at peace.
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