To have and to hold.: To have you is more than I could ever hold.

   I've been wanting to write this entry since November 30. It's probably never too wise to start writing an entry at midnight, especially after you have had quite a few glasses of white and red wine. But perhaps, wisdom never made for memorable entries, and it is when the heart takes over that the mind speaks.

   On November 30, the word of the day was "cathexis". It is a noun, defined as "the investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object or idea". The Merriam-Webster gives an example from an essay by Margaret Brose in The Body in Early Modern Italy: "The veil that hides Laura and her eyes, her hair, her smile (and its counterpart, the glove that veils her hand) becomes the object of Petrarch's cathexis..." The example is particularly apt considering Petrarch's love poems are considered one of the finest examples of a sonnet - and what could be a better expression of the essence of a sonnet but the "investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object or idea"?

   But what I really love is that "cathexis" comes from the Greek word, "kathexis", meaning "holding"; ultimately traced back to the Greek verb "echein", meaning "to have" or "to hold". To have and to hold. My breath disappeared. I felt a very real twinkling down my spine - from the brain, to my heart, through my lungs, rolling all the way to the bottom of my toes. I finally understood.

  In my wedding vow, I told him, he would be someone to have and to hold until the very end of my life. I titled the blog, to have and to hold. But, it wasn't until then, that very moment when I read the root of "cathexis" that I felt I knew what I had meant all along even before I understood.

  Even now, what is felt in my heart, I cannot fully express. It is not just to hold someone's hand till the end of your lives, never letting go, to hold all that is dear and true in your marriage in the bosom of your heart. It is to realise what you have, the unbelievable overwhelming magnitude of it all, to look at your hands and gaze in amazement of what you have. To shiver, literally, at what has been given. And to hold, oh to hold, palm to palm, like holy palmer's kiss.

   I especially like that this word has such a beautiful Greek origin. I still remember him as the boy who couldn't leave me alone, as I determinedly set out to head to Greece to fulfill all my long-held desires - to see Epidaurus (the physical embodiment of the theatre of my dreams) and to gaze at all my childhood wonders. To head to Greece, we had to spend a lot of money, but more than that catch many connecting flights. We had to walk out into the darkness (no lit lamp-posts to guide us) at 3 am and trudge to the train station with all our luggages; always slightly worried some drugged-out person will attack us in the dark. But we did. We walked in the darkness, sat for hours in the cold, changed tons of connecting flights, buses, monorails, until we reached the middle of Athens. I was so happy, I thought I would burst into flames. You were so tired you could barely keep your eyes open. We have so many other moments, so many before, so many after, but I remember this so vividly. That in this world, I have you, and you would follow me anywhere, no matter how long the journey.

   That when we climbed up the stairs all the way up the theatre, I wondered how good the acoustics were. So, you ran down all the way till the bottom again, and you said can you hear me?