People have been writing about love for millennia now. There is nothing here that I could possibly add, pontificate, or extrapolate that hasn’t already been said. Billions of people, the world over, have felt love, and I am just another person who had my own brushes with love. Paternal and maternal. Passionate. The everyday. I am not about to try to put a different spin on love. I'm not so full of myself. It's all been said and done before.
And something Kaetchen wrote yesterday: Love means pain.
And you know what? She’s right. Love is pain.
It’s as simple and as complicated as that.
But love is also life, fire, hope, anger, broken, domestic, intoxicating, banal, and indispensable.
Love, despite what my advisor and personal Jiminy Cricket (I need one!) Howard says, can indeed be the stuff that Hollywood is made of. It can be fervour, and combustion. It can be the dripping romances that we all aspire to have. I know it-I have had two lovers of that calibre that I will never, ever let go of.
But love is also in the little things. It’s in the Everyday. It’s in the small gestures. I once had a fight with a lover since I felt he never, ever expressed his feelings for me. He turned to me and said:
“Don’t you understand, H? I check your car to make sure the oil level is ok. I go out and warm it up on cold days. I don’t say a word when your icy feet meet my legs at night, I just warm them up. I may not say that I love you, but I do, and I use the little things to try to take care of you like that to prove that I do.”
I never complained again. I didn't even realize he had been doing them, I had just taken it for granted. And I never again was un-appreciative of the small gestures.
Love is sex, yearning, angst and faith. But it takes smaller forms, and it's important that I look at what happens and appreciate the little gestures, and recognize them as the important creatures they are. Forms of love and affection can also be, as I have found in my own bumpy journeys, the following:
- Making him a cup of hot tea every morning. Not because I felt I had to, but because he just appreciated it so much.
- Throwing up on his lap (not to be spiteful, I wasn’t trying to do it. I’m not that vengeful!) and he wasn’t angry. He knew I was ill. He just held my hair back and didn’t yell at me at all.
- A sister's hug.
- Going to the emergency room with the other person, and just waiting for hours, without complaint. An ER is the most boring and horrible of places in the world. But to kept them amused, distracted, and to smooth their hair the whole time.
- Writing a small note and putting it in your child's lunchbox.
-Realizing someone is pulling away but not letting them go without a fight.
- Allowing me to cry, as I told him in a torrent, all of the things that had happened to me in my life. And then loving me even more for trusting him.
- Knowing how I like my coffee. And bringing it to me in bed.
- Sending text messages every time we fly. A welcome message that lights up the phone with a “Welcome to (city name)!” It’s just a sign that someone out in the big wide world knows where the other person is. And cares.
- Looking over and seeing he had a bit of wax in his ear. And removing it for him, without comment.
- Sending a letter in the mail. Just because.
- A funny song to make someone laugh.
- Letting someone go because what you want in life and what they want in life are not the same thing. And missing them every day from then on.
- Taking all that you were and telling the story of it. At least, in the telling, the memory lives on. As long as the memory lives on, so does the love.
Those big gestures? God knows, I love them. Big romantic events with champagne and flowers? Well-just tell me where I can sign up. But when I look back on past lovers, it's not the big gestures I remember. It's the little ones, the small thoughtful movements and courtesies, that they thought went unnoticed. I guarantee you, they never did.
The Little Things. The small reminders of love that make the whole stupid scenario so worthwhile. Why we face the dragon, get scorched, and still go back for more. For me, it’s not what I WOULD do for love. It’s what WOULDN’T I do?
It's as simple and as complicated as that.
If I’ve missed something, let me know.
-H.
Posted by Everydaystranger at November 7, 2003 12:20 PM | TrackBackSee, Howard? I bet you thought I wasn't learning anything from our dialog....) Your comments were the icing on the cake, thanks dolly!
Becky, welcome!
Crusher-where the hell have you been?
Kat, Rob, Kaetchen, Jim, Kandy, and Sassy-thanks. And your examples that you listed were perfect :)
Posted by: Helen at November 8, 2003 07:55 AMGreat post. Came by way of Sassy, up there.
Howard, I think you hit it on the head also. I felt the same way for a long time and 5 years into a great relationship, I realized i've been waiting/looking for the wrong thing when what I have in front of me is all I really need.
Thanks to you both, actually.
Becky
Posted by: cyberangel at November 7, 2003 09:25 PMbeautiful post dear. and a lovely reminder to appreciate all the small things. *smooch*
Posted by: kat at November 7, 2003 06:57 PMLove is Jimmy Swaggart.
Posted by: crusher!™ at November 7, 2003 05:32 PMYou have a good heart Helen. If love is what you say it it (and it is) then life is full of love. And if anything is a more optomisitic belief than this then I don't know what it is.
Friends are important to me. And I love my friends. I hope they all know that.
Posted by: Rob at November 7, 2003 05:26 PMOne night after a ripper argument with J, I said to him, "Okay, now, you really fucked up. Better buy me something pretty." I was, of course, completely kidding - we weren't like that. But the lovely man went and bought me a fantastical six-pack of sparkly Spongebob pencils. It cost about $2. I couldn't have loved them - or him - more. He just knew me that well. I still use them every day.
Good on you, sweetheart.
Posted by: Kaetchen at November 7, 2003 05:23 PMDamn, you nailed this one, Helen.
I'm an early to bed, early to rise guy. Lovely Wife is on a more normal schedule so I'm generally going to bed well before she does. No matter what she's doing or what craziness is going on (3 kids, do the math) she always comes in to give me a final kiss and an "I love you" before I head off to slumberland.
Posted by: Jim at November 7, 2003 04:56 PMWhen my wife and I were dating, I came home once, and found that she had done my laundry for me (I was running out of clothes, but was just too busy to do it.) She's STILL getting points for that, and it was almost 5 years ago.
And, Helen, let me clarify. The danger of the hollywood-ization of love is not that it wrongly characterizes relationships, but that it seems to *replace* what a relationship is. It falsely portrays what makes a relationship work, not in its description, but in its lack of completeness. I was screwed up for a long time waiting for the world to stop when I looked into a girl's eyes for the first time. The world never stopped. I'm not saying that the world *doesn't ever* stop, but hollywood doesn't allow for the possibility that it won't.
Because you're absolutely right. A real relationship is formed, or actually forged, in the everyday. Like knowing that my wife likes half-decaf, half-regular, with skim milk and a sweet-n-low. Like making sure that I call if I'm going to be late. Like eating a whole pie-full of frustration and anger, because letting it out would serve no purpose, and I might say something I regret. Because hollywood doesn't tell the rest of the story. It doesn't show the hold-the-hair-back-while-I-throw-up moments. It doesn't tell the stress over money. Can I afford to take her out to dinner? Because the kids need shoes, and the car just threw something, which is probably going to cost, but if we make an insurance claim, they'll raise our rates. THAT's real life. Go through years of that together, and you have a relationship. As my Rav's wife says, she didn't *really* love her husband until they were married ten years.
If I had waited for what Hollywood tells me is how a relationship should begin, I'd still be waiting.
You were once (or twice) blessed with the kind of love hollywood sells. But it's not the only love out there, or even the most prevalent. It's pretty damn rare, in fact. Maybe I'm a pessimist, but, while I know *someone* wins the lottery, it's not going to be me. And I certainly can't plan the monthly budget thinking that I'm going to.
I'm not unromantic. I love the big gestures too. And I love the little things. But a relationship is about putting in the time and effort. The rest, is gravy.
Posted by: Howard at November 7, 2003 04:26 PMThat is probably one of the truest things that could ever be said. It's the little things that mean more than anything.
Beautiful post.
Posted by: Kandy at November 7, 2003 03:45 PMMy best friend came into my bedroom once to find me crying. She didn't ask why, she just went down to the freezer, grabbed the tub of ice cream, two spoons, and the Magic Shell and came back up. She sat beside me, handed me a spoon, squirted half the Magic Shell directly into the ice cream tub, and said, "Dig in, girlfriend!" We're going on 10 years now, and she's still my best friend and that's one of my fondest memories of her.
Posted by: Sassy McSmartpants at November 7, 2003 03:20 PM