Looking at an Old Love

Here we are the day after St. Valentine’s Day. Sparky and I celebrated by doing a carry out at our traditional restaurant – Taco Bell. What better way to celebrate true love than to stoke the fire in the heart (can you say heartburn?) and to test the bonds of true love by sharing a bed with someone who has eaten several bean burritos? As I get older I marvel at the differences between old love and new love. It seems just yesterday that Sparky and I were saying “I do”. Back then everything was an adventure – from buying groceries to visiting family on holidays. We were in the midst of melding our history and expectations to developing traditions for our own family. New love was at times strange and awkward. Like wearing new shoes that pinched a little at the toe, new love was exciting but not always easy. Now old love is a bit like those house slippers that you’ve worn for 3 decades – there are a few holes and the soles are a bit worn. They aren’t pretty but the trade off is pure comfort. Of course that isn’t how they started.

There really isn’t anything that says true love like being kissed even though your mouth tastes like the bottom of a bird cage. True love sees you as a raving beauty when you are wearing a ratty nightgown and you have bed head. Old love is relaxed and will help you disinfect the kitchen trash can when the liner splits and spills egg shells, tea leaves and potato peels. Yes, true love is refined and tested and becomes that old love that laughs when the burrito makes your gut start to sing whale songs. And that old love laughs even harder when you laugh at their laughter and toot with every laugh… Yeah, old love can laugh and not be horrified or embarrassed with worry that divorce proceeding will be begun on the grounds of “excessive gas”. It saddens me that too many young people never give their new love time to get comfortable. They are trading in those worn slippers just because they splashed a little coffee on one toe…