🌳 An open letter to my husband, on his 38th birthday. 🌳
To knowing the forests we come from.
An open letter to my husband, on his 38th birthday.
Max Andrew Dubinsky, person that I am planted next to, person that I love.
This year, you said to me for the first time: “I am happy.”
My Leo babe, my gift-loving, celebration-having, compliment-collecting, hedonistic, attention-getting and attention-giving man who has taught me so thankfully to enjoy all of these parts of life.
This year you have said you want nothing; you have it all; you are at peace.
At last there is not a style dilemma to be solved with a new collection of new jackets, boots, cashmere sweaters, or other handsome things. They have not lost their charm, but rather you’ve grown tired of the new new new and want to simply be yourself.
Women know that when this time comes, it is time for jewelry.
For your 38th birthday I have chosen a silver signet ring to be engraved with not your initials — which are ‘MAD’, not your family crest — which is rife with emotion and men unlike you, but something that goes much deeper: An oak leaf.
Long before your father and grandfather and long before world wars and American culture and fathers who cannot speak to sons and unfortunate marriages and run down steel town mafias and sports betting and peaches at the dinner table, the Dubinskys were a family from Ukraine.
The Ukrainian word for ‘Oak’ is ‘Dub’ and the family name ‘Dubinsky’ was given to those living in Dubno (a city in the oldest part of the country on the river) and in Dubin (now in Belarus) — by the oak groves.
Let me tell you about the oaks. The place from which you come.
Oak trees are the noble ones. They have long symbolized strength, endurance, and courage. To Ukrainians, the oak was the tree with a soul.
The Slavs as well as the Romans and Greeks held oaks in the highest esteem above the other trees. Oaks were the tree of the gods, sacred to Zeus and Thor.
Drinking the most water of all trees and being tallest in the forest, their frequent lightning strikes signaled their dominion over the rain with the gods.
In ancient Ukrainian mythology, the oak symbolizes Perun, the god of storms.
Disagreements and disputes were brought to be settled in front of the oak trees in Old Ukraine. The oak was the holy place — it’s very nature calmed, listened, made others feel heard. The oak was central to social gatherings. It is where weddings were had, public assemblies assembled, and parties were thrown.
Oaks are called the kings of the forest: they support more other species around them than any other tree, particularly late in their life. No other tree even comes close to caring for as many fellow creatures.
Through time, oaks have been used to build ships and railways — oaks are well traveled.
In times of war, oak’s acorns were used for imitation coffee. See? It runs deeper than your blood; you ARE coffee.
Oak gall ink has authored the Magna Carta, Mozart’s music, Newton’s theories. It is the vehicle for every great written word for over 1400 years. Writing has always been your language.
Oaks are on their own schedule. Their mast years, their years of great success and abundance, are still not understood. They baffle scientists who try to predict them but it does not matter because however inconsistent, the abundance always comes.
At the very top of oaks are where the fairies live. They use oaks as their portal between our world and theirs. The tree in the forest which is a home to imagination and the things we do not understand.
The Celtic philosophers and priests were given the name ‘Druid,’ meaning ‘knower of the oak tree.’ Something about the oak groves brought them closer to the answers, turning them inwards.
Happy birthday to my Max —
May the oak be here to guide you back home, as you are surely an oak to all who know you; or at least a man who sits under one, and shares everything it gives you.
So beautiful ❤️