Love Story

I was pondering love this morning, thinking about my parents. When I had been accepted into OCU, the month before I left my parents house for the first and the last (hopefully the last, you never know...) time, we drove to Florida for a national dance competition. My parents took me to the campus they met and fell in love at, University of Tampa, just Mom, Dad and me touring the school. I watched as they, together, showed me their dorms, where they ate lunch together, the bookstore where my Mom first caught site of Dad...she thought he was the football coach :) Lastly, they showed me the tree they had carved their initials in...what? it was like, 1975, perfectly acceptable. I had long before that steeled myself against my parents stories about each other. Thier verbal bashings of each other and us were indelible. I had gone to the attorneys with them more than once, forced to choose who to live with in front of them, confided in, coaxed, and never, never protected. Whenever I saw my parents hold hands I rolled my eyes. However, I am a sucker for young love and hearing them tell me thier story, watching them re-live their story, it was bittersweet. My parents were the picture of love. Their wedding picture hung in the living room our whole life, a seeming lie, my Mom adoringly staring into my Dads eyes and him back. They met in college after my Dad's divorce. He had two sons at the time, he had just gotten out of the airforce. My Mom, the sun lover applied only for two schools Florida and Hawaii. She drove down with a carload of her closest girlfriends from highschool. They met, dated, my Mom was disowned for her choice, but thier "love" prevailed. They were poor. They ate grapefruit for breakfast lunch and dinner. My Dad used to play "annie's song" to my Mom on his guitar.....

What happened? Growing up I had a cynical POV about love and marriage. I disdained and desired it by the time I was 8. But how, how could it work? My parents, they had loved each other, but no more? You'd think I'd be set up for success having seen what happened. and I have my own opinions on why my parents went the way of lone ranger, but I know I saw the goings on through child eyes and some of my inaccurate perceptions have already surfaced. Sometimes it seems that love is a mystery, a vapor, you can't hold onto it, you can't control it, you just enjoy it while it graces you...but that is a feeling, I don't believe that is true. I wish there were a different word for Love that seperated it from lust, infatuation, idealism...but there isn't. I think what it boils down to is choices. Chosing this or that. Choices lead to intimacy. Choosing the little things that support and affirm your lover build a foundation. Can you trust them? Help them trust you in the million little decisions you make like - calling when you are late, talking about it when you don't want to, asking when you're not sure of the answer. I think that one of the things that chipped at my parents relationship is they both felt they had to self-preserve, like if they didn't defend themself the other would consume or forget them. I think this was carry-over from thier pasts.

I know, I know, arm-chair psychologist, Chris and friends-feel free to groan ;) This is just my musings on the situation. I think about it often. If you saw the pictures, my parents, they're adorable. They "loved" each other, or else, they really liked who they were with the other person. and then it stopped. and now they don't even talk to each other unless forced because they share common children. That's life, I know, and they are both infinitely better now that they have been apart for a few years. I just think it helps me to take it apart and put it into managable little pieces.