Abby’s Diary: Evocative

e-voc-a-tive – adjective

Tending or having the power to evoke a strong reaction, response, or feeling.

This week I was blessed to have a wonderful reporter from The Ponte Vedra Recorder, Jasmine Marshall, write a full page article about me and my adventures on the sno-cone truck. A word she used in an e-mail to me as she was both reading and writing my article at the same time to describe my style of writing was “evocative”. Being the sophisticated, savvy, published author I am I immediately had to go to a dictionary and look up the word to truly understand how she was describing my writing, and sure enough she was dead on.

I think that I do write evocatively because I am a very emotional person.

Friday March 10th marked my 28th wedding anniversary to a wonderful man , and ironically I was invited to attend a wedding on that day, at about the same time my husband and I exchanged vows, also on a Friday night so many years ago. We prepared to attend together and he even purchased a beautiful new dress for me to wear as an anniversary gift. The saleswoman at Dillard’s provided such superior service including the sweetest compliment of” I will always think of you and how amazing you look in that dress at this moment whenever I sell it to anyone else!”

Unfortunately, the weather in New York did not co-operate and his flight was delayed, my daughter and son-in-law were delayed in traffic, so I attended the service alone.

To contrast the two events ours was up north, with snow on the ground, dark at 4:00p.m. while this was a magnificent Florida day, on the beach with bright blue skies, sunshine on my back, with an ocean breeze in my hair, and sand between my toes.

I watched as the groom anxiously awaited the arrival of his beautiful bride. He was so overcome with emotion at first sight that it brought tears to my eyes to see, feel, and witness, so many blessing being bestowed on these two beautiful people who were clearly so much in love and made for each other. Ironically this was the second wedding I’ve witnessed in just five months where the bride comforted the husband so overwhelmed with nerves and emotion. I found those gestures to be so touching, dear, and indicative of the women they would be for their spouse.

It was the other way around for me 28 years ago as I cried so hard that our guests had to think that maybe I really didn’t want to marry my husband. It wasn’t that at all, it was plain and simple that in that moment I could not believe that someone like my husband was choosing me over everyone else to share his love with forever.

That gesture and so many more over the years have evoked so much emotion in me that once I start crying, it’s hard for me to stop.

It is both a blessing and a curse to feel things so deeply but it’s the only way I know how to be. I want my stories to evoke emotion because when you can feel that much joy you can move mountains and change someone’s life, or with that much pain you can empower yourself to change the course of your life like I did, to achieve even greater things.

Congratulations Lillian and Clark!