Valentine’s Day at Sixty

    Valentine’s Day.  Hearts, flowers, chocolates…love.
    You know how we got here?  
    The story behind Valentine’s Day involves the Roman ruler, Claudius ll and a priest named Valentine.  Seems Claudius noticed that his men fought better, were braver and more courageous if they didn’t have wives and children they were hankering to get back to.  So, like the classic Roman ruler he was, he decreed that none of his troops were to be married.
    Well, we all know what happens when you decree that people don’t do something, don’t we?  They spend every waking hour trying to figure out a way to do it, whatever it is.  And that’s what happened in Ancient Rome.  
    Couples became desperate to get married, and found a priest named Valentine who was willing to defy Claudius ll and marry them…for love.  
    Of course, Claudius ll found out.  He went to Valentine and tried to persuade him to stop marrying people.  But Valentine was one of those stubborn folks, and besides, he was carried away with love and romance.  So he refused.  
    And what does a Roman ruler do when confronted with someone who won’t do what he’s told?  He kills them.  Claudius ll put Valentine in jail, and what do you think happened?  Valentine fell in love, of course.  He fell in love with… the jailer’s daughter.  The jailer’s daughter who was…blind.  Isn’t that a sweet touch?  
    And, the last letter Valentine wrote to the blind sweetheart before his death was signed?  From Your Valentine.
    That’s how we wound up spending a billion dollars a year on Hallmark Cards.  Love, romance, hearts, flowers…lace and taffeta.
    Which brings to mind Gwen John.
    Gwen John was a Welsh painter, born in the late 1800s.  One of the reasons I love her is that she left about 300 paintings of cats behind her and cats are the love of my life.  She is famous for her paintings, but she is even more famous for a love affair, a love affair she had with the French Sculptor, August Rodin.  Remember the Thinker?  That’s Rodin.
    Well now, Rodin wasn’t exactly Paul Newman, but he was brooding, moody, temperamental, brilliant, a womanizer, and a brute – all the things that drive women mad with love.
    And mad Gwen John became.  
    She adored Rodin.  She lived, breathed for Rodin.  She wanted to wash his shirts, clean his floors, smell his shoes.  She wrote to him, hundreds of letters, and made valentines for him using the lace from her hats and the taffeta of her dresses.  
    She wanted to live for Rodin, die for Rodin.  She took the train to the suburbs of Paris so she could hide in the woods and spy on him working in his garden.  
    But, Rodin had lovers.  Many lovers.  He also had a wife.  Did I forget to mention that?  
    So, finally, inevitably, he said they could no longer meet alone.  
    Gwen John was devastated.  She pined, she stopped painting.  She wanted to throw herself into the Seine, die a romantic death in a beautiful dress.
    Ah.  Well.  So is love.  Or so they tell us love is.  Romantic love.  
    But, you know, I watch that stuff on the television or at the movies, and I don’t think even if I felt that way about somebody,  I could work up the energy to pursue it.  I’m not at all sure I could have an affair with Robert Redford is he showed up on my doorstep naked.  
    I’d probably say: Robert Redford.  Get help yourself to a cup of coffee.  I’ve got to go upstairs and take a nap.
    When I wake up in the morning, I don’t even feel like rolling over, much less taking a train to the suburbs of Paris to spy on some old man working in his garden.
    You know, at sixty, I’m not even sure that all that hearts and flowers and melodrama is love.  I’m not sure what it is, but I don’t think it’s love.  Lust, boredom, self-dramatization, perhaps, but not love.  The Romans thought it was madness.  There was marriage here and there was madness.  I think they’re right.
    At sixty, I find that romantic love is made of sterner stuff.
      Love is not rushed, or frantic.  Love is often desperate, but in a quiet, still way.  
    I find that love does not run, it stands, solidly on two feet, unmoveable as a stone.  It is what grounds you.
    Love at sixty, is not as noisy or loud or talkative as it used to be.  It is most often silent.  
    It is sometimes keeping silent when everything inside you wants to scream.  
    Love, now, rarely sings.  But it often grits its teeth, closes its eyes, sometimes even clamps its mouth shut.  
    Love is not frilly at sixty.  It’s not lace and it’s certainly not taffeta.  It’s not even pretty that much of the time.
    Love can be walking into an emergency room and taking the restraints off your husband’s ankles, running warm water on a wash cloth and cleaning his feet so he will remember who he is.
    Love, I find, is not these days so much in the saying as in the doing.   Love is being there, even when you don’t want to be.
    Love doesn’t go skittering off into fantasy any more.  Love is slow-moving, patient (although that word almost sticks in my throat because patient is the thing I find most difficult in the world to be.)  Let’s say love should be patient.  I just haven’t gotten there yet.
    Love is things like watching your husband from across the room and not screaming when you realize that he’s going to put his dirty shoes on that coffee table until the day he dies or you die, which ever comes first.
    Love is not rolling your eyes when he starts to tell the about the four fishermen in hell, AGAIN…………….
    Love is answering the phone (now that we’ve all got those little screens that tell us who’s phoning), love is picking up the phone…
•    even though you know it’s your brother….who’s going to tell you every single last detail about his prostate surgery.
Love is picking up the receiver…
•    even tough you know it’s your son’s homosexual lover wanting you to bail him out of jail…..AGAIN and not mentioning the fact that he hasn’t paid you back the $5,000 you spent sending him to “Treatment.”
Love is picking up the telephone
•    even though it’s your daughter telling you she is planning to move to CUBA.
    
At sixty, love is stuff like…
•    not telling your son that he’s just about to make the worst decision of his life.  
•    not telling your new daughter-in-law she’s raising your grandchild to be a serial killer.
Love is…
•    not yanking a twelve year old cashier over the counter because she can’t make change for a dollar and asks you what an artichoke is.
•    Love is not interrupting people who have no verbal editor.  (Think about that one.)

Love, I find, at sixty is reaching out through all the pain and regret, the missed chances and the grief, and smiling.  It’s having the sight of a blue heron still take your breath away.  It’s saying, one more time, in the face of one more extraordinary thing: “Look.”  
…at the moon
…at a Pileated woodpecker
…at a deer
…at the face of a friend

Love, at sixty, is sometimes, just having the courage to get up and see something beautiful in another day.