We christened our daughter Hosanna 21 years ago. I felt a little sheepish, like folks would think it was not a legit appellation. But it unzips on my tongue, and I adore the meaning... "Lord, save us!" Hosanna grew to like her name, and not just because it inspired an elderly fairy godmother type to bequeath her a tidy sum.

Every day I help someone else, too, if only to spell catastrophe or buy bananas. It weaves my life into the weft of my family, and neighbors. I want to be connected by the colored threads of collaboration.

 

Marriage is about symbiosis. I remember when I began to realize that John's tendency to lose things is an invitation to serve him. For years I had classified it as an annoyance, rather than the entrance into his vulnerability. He leaps to rescue me as well, although we have had sparks about whose lap the laptop rests on while he thaws my frozen files. Twenty wiggling fingers on a keyboard are more crowded than two bulging bodies in a Southwest bathroom cubicle. Just now he called asking for an address and phone number scrawled on a faded piece of paper, that he left somewhere on a horizontal surface probably in the living room, or dining room or kitchen. My first response was prickly, but then I repeated the mantra.

 

"Serve the ones you love..."