Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Valentines And Other Follies Of The Human Heart


"Without love, you are nothing."

That was the sign posted on a church marquee that my husband and I saw as were driving home from the airport on Sunday night.

"Good Lord," I said. "As if being alone on Valentine's Day wasn't enough, now churches are telling people that without love they are nothing."
"I don't think they were talking about that sort of love," he said.
"Well, it didn't say what sort of love," I replied. "It just said love. I can see some poor lonely person reading that sign and deciding to just go sit on a railroad track until a train came along to put them out of their misery."
"Huh," he said.

Valentine's Day is a screwy holiday if you ask me. From the earliest days of grade school when the pretty, popular girls got the good Valentines that came in the punch-out Valentine's card kits and I got the stupid dumb ones because I was fat and the teacher's pet, it's been nothing but a soul-sucking disappointment to me.

I've been in love with the man I'm married to for twenty-three years and we never, ever get Valentine's Day right. Last year we decided to just cook something on the grill, have a drink and let that be it. I'm sure I cooked something special to go with whatever was going on the grill (my memory- it's a sad, sad loss) but by the time the grill got cranked up and the meat was done, we'd had too much of the drink and I was in tears and had taken the opportunity to do what I do best, which is to get psychotic.

"There's no more romance in our relationship!" I wailed.

"What?" said my husband, standing there with the platter of high-dollar meat that we surely didn't even need unless you're talking about the fact that it was food and I certainly needed to eat something.

"You used to pursue me. When you met me you were all about the romance. Then you caught me and that was that. That's all you needed to do. Now I'm like one of these," and here I nodded towards one of the many deer-heads on the wall. "Just, a thing."
"What are you talking about?" he asked.

And I had no idea, quite honestly. He doesn't treat me like a thing at all but I suppose that because dinner was late and I'd had one martini too many and he didn't buy me something from Tiffany's, I had determined that I was now nothing more than a dead trophy, stuck on a wall.

And if the truth be known, there is probably nothing any man can do that will proclaim his love for his woman (or a woman for her man or a man for his man or a woman...okay, you know what I'm saying) on one specific day of the year that shows the depths and breadths of his love.

Okay. Maybe if he surprised his love with a trip in a private jet to Paris where he had made reservations at some amazing restaurant and on board was a beautiful new couture dress that fit her perfectly because he knew every inch of her beloved body, along with a small token of his love in the form of platinum and diamonds for her to wear to dinner and bottles of wine and small perfect little bites of the most delicious food on earth to nibble on before they got to dinner and, well, yeah, maybe that would do it.

But short of that, how can anyone come through on Valentine's Day? Because the purpose of the day is supposedly to show the one you love just how MUCH you love them and that can't be done with flowers, candy, dinner reservations or even jewelry, although in my book, jewelry can come close.

Nah. It's not Valentine's Day where we prove our love.

It's every other day of the year when we prove it by earning the money and cleaning the toilets and thanking each other for doing these things. It's coming home every night and it's making dinner every night and it's going together to meet with the wedding caterer for the daughter's wedding. It's saying "I love you" at the end of every phone conversation and it's holding each other's hands during a funeral as tears run down your faces.

It's taking your mother wood for her fireplace and it's saying, "Sure honey, go fishing this weekend." Or hunting or going off to visit a friend or coming to see you in a play.

It's lying down together at the end of every day and saying, "I love you," again because you can't say it too much.

It's being together every minute for ten days and nights on a vacation and then getting back and realizing that you miss him when he goes to work and where is your best friend, your lover, your buddy to play with?

It's standing up in front of friends under a clear blue sky on a beautiful October day and saying "I do," to all sorts of crazy promises that you have no idea what the implications of are and it's creating a family and working insane hours and raising children and going to school plays together and it's having problems and it's staying and doing the hard work and making it better.

It's seeing each other age and not letting that get in the way and it's planning for the future and it's living in the day.

It's shared jokes that go back decades and memories, too, of crazy times and funny times and good times and rotten times and times you wouldn't repeat for all the money in the world and times you keep in your heart in a velvet-lined box and only open up and look at once in a while because they're so beautiful that you don't want to wear them out.

It's changing the oil in the car and it's planting camellias together and it's putting in a spring garden and it's shoveling chicken shit. It's being patient and tolerant and it's using good manners when that's the only thing that'll get you through something. It's acting sillier than you'd ever want your kids to know their parents act and it's being respectful even when you don't understand.

It's not walking out the door when the other one gets psychotic and starts wailing about romance.

It's about putting flax seed in his smoothie so he'll live forever and it's knowing that neither one of us will. It's about listening to his breath and his heartbeat and knowing that one day one of us will be there when the other one's breath and heartbeat cease and it's holding each other closer because of that knowledge.

Love is about all of those things and it's about dreams and reality and fantasy and hope and despair and joy and death and having someone to hold tight to through all of that. It's about someone to share it all with.

And by golly, it may not be true that there is nothing without love but it's knowing that it's easier, it's sweeter, it's a blessing beyond compare to have it.

And even though I know all of this, I know myself and that I will have a small breakdown tomorrow because we haven't planned anything for Valentine's. We haven't made dinner reservations, we haven't planned a get-away, and I seriously doubt any jewelry's been bought.
Which is not to say he hasn't bought me plenty of jewelry over the past two decades. He's bought me enough jewelry for a lifetime.

And he also chose not to take a bulkhead seat on the flight home on Sunday because it would have meant splitting us up on the plane even though he had to sit with his unnaturally long legs wedged into a space barely big enough for a midget's.

And that is LOVE, baby.

So I'll try to remember all of that and leave the deer heads out of it this year.

Because I have love and that is truly something.

15 comments:

  1. I'm so glad I have parents who love each other and are willing to express that.

    Personally, I'll be going with several other single friends to see a really good rockabilly show. Also, beer.

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  2. Thank you, Quiet Girl.
    And DTG- sounds pretty fun to me. Maybe we should join you.

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  3. Unknown Hinson, he's a hell of a guy. If you guys want to come, you're more than welcome.

    http://www.unknownhinson.com/

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  4. Give up a bulkhead seat? I guess I really don't know what love is after all.

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  5. That was such a beautiful post. It made me cry like a baby because it's all so true. I'm so lucky to have you two as my parents.

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  6. It's so nice to have such nice children. Thank you, Jessie.

    And Juancho- you jest, my friend. I know you do.

    Uh, DTG- that Unknown Hinson guy looks sort of scary to me.

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  7. You and your husband are very lucky to have each other. Why obsess about the hype of "LOVE" one day a year, when you both live your love every day?

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  8. For some reason, holidays are ALL difficult for me, even the made-up ones. I think it has something to do with childhood.
    Duh, huh?
    But I'm really going to try to just be sweet today.

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  9. This made me cry, because this is exactly how I feel about my husband and the love we have together. Thank you for sharing that! I was freaking out about Valentine's day until I read that.

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  10. I never imagined you were a chubby kid.
    So glad you linked to this.
    Beautiful, true writing.
    I loved the part about you getting psychotic and the deer head. Well, not really. But so real!

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  11. I was looking forward to seeing my comment from two years ago, and I'm surprised I don't see one!! I remember reading it :) And I still love it!

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  12. Oh wait, maybe I was still a lurker! Cute :)

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  13. As far as I'm concerned, a pair of pruners trumps a private flight to Paris any day.

    Never was a fan of Valentine's Day

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  14. Bethany- From a perspective of distance, I am pretty funny sometimes when I get psychotic.

    SJ- You are an ORIGINAL member of the Church of the Batshit Crazy, girl!

    Michelle- I don't know. I'd take a trip to Paris. I think. I do have that agoraphobic thing going on so you're probably right about the pruners.

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