He'd gotten up early just to start my car, so it would be warm and ready for me to jump in and go...
This is what love is.
I'd been so sick for so long... I needed to take a nap before the movie. He kissed me and said he was running to the store. While I slept, he stood at the counter and opened the bag of popcorn. He took the small paring knife in hand, and cut out the kernels from every piece, because I couldn't eat them and he didn't want me to have to go to the movies and think about the fact that I couldn't have popcorn.
This is what love is.
The first gift he ever gave me was a silicon soup ladle. I was puzzled momentarily until he explained,
"I was in the grocery store, and I saw this and thought of you - you have these nice pots but you only have a metal ladle, and I didn't want you to scratch up your nice cookwear."We'd been dating maybe two months. Imagining him in the grocery store, thinking of me, made my heart happy.
This is what love is. (And we still use the ladle!)
They say you don't know what love is till you know. The idea that something so fundamental and important to our happiness can remain undefined, unexplained, and unable to be conjured or controlled is maddening - but makes it so much sweeter when you do find it.
He held my hand for hours in the emergency room, while I squirmed on the gurney, delirious with pain. He wakes early to cook a hot breakfast for me on days I have an important meeting. When my new patent leather heels were being ruined by the brick sidewalk that was gobbling them up as we walked back from dinner on a freezing February night, he gave me his shoes, willing to walk the icy pavement in his socks.
This is a love that has made me a better person - a kinder, more patient person. This is what you hope love is.
I remember when I was single how bad Valentine's Day made me feel about being single. It puts immense pressure on men to live up to an ideal created by mass media, card companies, restaurants, jewelers - even my grocery store has giant red heart balloon arches and a sea of red-packaged food products that smack you when you walk in the door!
So I swore that if I didn't celebrate it as a singleton, I would not celebrate if and when I was coupled. And that's why this is most definitively NOT a post for Valentine's Day.
What it is is a reminder that love is something that cannot be expressed in flowers, cards, chocolates, jewelry, restaurants, no matter the color, value, shape, or size.
Love is a big thing made up of a million small - sometimes microscopic - things.
It's opening a jar that's too tight. It's refilling a drink without being asked. It's singing a beautiful song off-key because the words remind you of them. It's when they pull the blanket over you when you're sleeping. It's turning your alarm down so it doesn't wake them. It's loading the dishwasher, and doing a load of laundry - and thanking them for taking the initiative - period. It's knowing sometimes they need to *not* talk about it just yet - and knowing that just because you're talking about it he doesn't have to do anything but listen. It's letting him rest his hand on your soft, fleshy hip when you are lying next to each other instead of swatting at his hand or turning away...
It's knowing there are twice as many good things as bad, and that every day he or she is in your life is better than if they weren't.
That's what love is.
***********************************************************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment