What Loving asks of Us

Love--It's a complicated thing. Whether it's love of a person, an animal, or love of Earth; true love demands a lot of us.

Late yesterday afternoon after a glorious tromp in the snowy woods with my husband Paul who had just returned from his fourth time traveling so far this winter, we took a short drive so I could show him the anomalously high tides at the south shore beach near our house. While driving we heard a sweet tale of love broadcast on our local CBC afternoon radio show. A couple who married in the 1940's, she not yet eighteen and he perhaps somewhat older, had been married for sixty five years at the time of the interview some years ago.

A couple of things struck me while listening to their time worn voices speak of their early and enduring love for each other. The wife married at the age my husband and I began dating. That means that when she was forty seven they celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary. This year my husband and I will be forty seven and will celebrate (or at least I will comment upon) the fact that this fall it will be thirty years since we started dating and officially "going together" at our high school Christmas dance.

That makes it twenty nine years ago today that Paul and I had our Valentine's date, supper out at Papa Joe's restaurant in Charlottetown. I have an image of that supper imprinted deeply in me. It was our first restaurant date; any other eating out would have been at a fast food place like Wendy's. This was fancy in comparison to a burger and fries. We sat at a table for two and I ordered a turkey dinner but I can't recall what Paul had. Strangely or not, I remember noting the turnip on my plate was cubed, not mashed like I was used to. We ate our meals chatting about life as it was for us at the time. He was busy with curling, competing at the national level, and I was trying to skillfully navigate this dating thing and still keep up my academics. The part about this date that gets our kids every year when I relate the story is that Paul asked me to be his prom date that night. Prom, in mid-June, was five whole months away. What if I said yes and then we broke up in between? Would we be stuck with each other as prom dates when by that time there might be someone else we would rather go with? We knew people for whom prom was a misery due to breakup drama and we wanted none of that for ourselves. Madly in the early stages of young love, but still uncertain if it was a wise choice, I accepted with the qualifier that we only attend together if we still were together.

Ha! Little did we know then.

The second thing we noted about the sweet love story on CBC which we heard told so tenderly yesterday was that it all seemed so simple. Paul commented to me how easy they made the whole being and staying married thing sound. They briefly mentioned tough times financially and that they raised five boys together, but the focus was on the good times they had shared and ways they made time for each other.

What about the slog of enduring the difficulties life inevitably throws your way? What about the tears, the exhaustion, the frustrations, the illnesses, the resentments, the wanting to run away or take time apart when things get harder than you ever imagined they could?

We guessed it wouldn't make for as good of a Valentine's Love story had the focus been on the hard times. As well, time, if we are lucky, softens the edges of some of life's challenges. Forgiving and forgetting might be part intention and part a factor of time removing you from the closeness of the circumstances that prove upsetting in the first place.

I want to say that ours is a love story that someone could write about. High school sweethearts still together almost thirty years later, but would it still qualify if you knew that we've fallen in and out of love with each other more times than anyone would want to count?

Falling out of love is like being parched, walking aimlessly in a desert without even an oasis to keep you going. It's as though anything that you remembered love being isn't any more. It's a closure of the part of yourself that that opens to more than yourself. It's sad and lonely and all the things love isn't.

Love's return is a reawakening of that withered, wounded place. Like the almost impossible greening of springtime after the harshest winter brings new growth where only cold resided and where beauty was altogether absent.

The up swelling of love's return begins for me in remembrances. In this way it reminds me of what a psychiatrist once told me about overcoming depression. That you must moment by moment, live your way back to joy through doing those things that used to bring you joy. That the human brain in depression will not be convinced that there is ever joy to be had again and must be retrained, step by rote driven, baby step.

This too has been my experience of falling out of and back into love. My returns to loving have been routed in my deep history of togetherness and remembrances of love for my partner. And importantly so, as much is at stake when two parents of three children fall out of love and equally there is much is to be gained from finding your way back to love. But none of this is quick and easy like so much of what our culture demands our lives to be like.

Like the slow food movement, long term loving takes intention, caring and willingness to put in the time to produce something meaningful even when the results are not immediately gratifying.

And so the woods walks and tea dates and meditation practice and long weekend morning talks while the three kids are still sleeping are what we invest our together time in. These are to our relationship what planting seeds, growing winter squash, harvesting and then slow roasting it mid winter are to gardening. It requires a lot of withstanding, understanding and heaping shovel full's of tenderness each so that some cold evening will be warmed by a sweetness you almost forgot was possible any more.

In short, keeping a love connection alive over the years takes a considerable amount of effort. Considerable. As the pressures of life and the soul wearying world conspire so often to alienate us from ourselves and each other, falling out of love is something that can happen to any couple at any time. Finding your way back together again requires an ongoing, honest conversation about what still being together even means to each other.

Yesterday in the woods the snow was deep and sticky and the rising wind whipped the snow off the evergreens into little blizzard like flurries. The air was thick with falling snow and it felt almost eerie and seemed so wild I briefly wanted to turn around. When I expressed this Paul looked at me that way he does sometimes--like give me a break...keep going Jill, we've been through harder than this before. Sometimes it's me giving him that look. And so we continued on. The winds abated and the beauty we were surrounded with, even immersed in, was a revelation to us.

Wonder and beauty are still so possible.

A little further along the trail we paused together realizing we would have to duck almost to the ground to crouch beneath the evergreen branches heavy with yet another snowfall. Looking back to the trial we had just broken I commented that all you cold see were these funny meandering footprints, only ours, winding their way, mostly together, to where we were standing just then.

Mostly together and in that moment shatteringly beautiful.

We paused in the wintry scene, embracing what our lives were in that very moment. Wild, well-trodden, and constrained by so many pressures, but attempting to still be something to each other.

We stood for a moment honouring where we've been and acknowledging that love doesn't ask us to know everything that might come our way. It only asks us to show up and make space for its presence in our hearts, right now.

This was going to be a blog post today about how desperately we all need to fall in love again with Earth. Instead it came out as a relationship story.

Falling in love again, whether with Earth, your spouse or some vital part of yourself you have forgotten existed is all one in the same. It requires a willingness to begin again, to be vulnerable, to make sacrifices beyond your wildest imaginings, and it is so worth the effort.

Imagine if the love story we all could tell our grandchildren was that of how after falling out of love (with self, with Earth, with each other) we found our way back again?

Happy Love Day because there is no greater gift than love.

In warmth,

Jill MacCormack