I’m a lover. I
love the concept and miracle of love; how it can appear suddenly and completely
where no love existed before (like the Big Bang theory, I guess), and also how
it can evolve and change shape over time.
I love to distraction and forever, yet I can observe love between myself
and my lovees with scientific interest, like a third party. My experience with
love drives me and fascinates me, and my love for the treasured people in my
life in no way eclipses the deeply rich relationship I have with myself!
In love with my own thoughts, and incredibly kind while
imprinting events in my memory, I have pondered much on how my many (many) love stories have made life so
fascinating and full. I was
talking to my genius Dad about how I have had not only many loves, but many
kinds of love. He said,
matter-of-factly, “Of course all love is not the same. The Greek have five words for it.” As in many conversations with my Dad, I learned a lot, had a meaningful exchange of ideas, but finished exhausted. Here is what I have determined:
I got all kinds of Eros
(romantic, sexual love) for Big Daddy.
He is the only man I love with passionate desire. I know I have fallen into Eros before,
but if any remnants of those relationships remain, they have gone all Philios
(brotherly, friendship love) by now. I feel no pangs of doubt or yearning to have made different
choices in life that would have me married to another man. On the contrary, I
thank God that love grabbed hold of me at the right moment with just the right
person. All I am trying to say
here is that l am so glad I listened every time love called in the past,
because even the wrong numbers have allowed me to have a deep understanding of
where love has delivered me today.
I had this one summer (haven’t we all?). I would be performing the first of many
podunk shows in podunk towns. No disrespect meant. I have made a life of putting
on little shows that not a lot of people see. Anyhoo, it was my first non-school-related, away-from-home endeavor,
and the first time I was aware that I needed do develop the skill of making
friends. I had always thought my job was to be alluring enough to “bait” people
into liking me. I did not have
much experience getting up the guts to introduce myself to anyone and would not
realize until years later that I could sometimes do the choosing in
relationships. So, alone I sat on
the first day of rehearsals, waiting to be chosen, praying that someone would
come over and talk to me. Suddenly
I was rescued by not one but two gentlemen. I will call them Hoss and
Shakespeare. I fell in love. With them both. Each. Separately. Madly. But, not just because
they saved me. By the end of that first night, I realized that the three of us had a
dynamic that was based on common humor, vocabulary, pop culture references,
shared preferences in music and cuisine that were urban and country at the same
time, and an insane desire to tell a joke or a story over and over again until
the comic timing was just right. When we got together we were in our own world, work-shopping sketches that we wrote and re-wrote for 12
weeks on a dorm room floor. To our cast-mates, we undoubtedly appeared to be nothing more than loaf-abouts, albeit wildly cool ones, smoking and slouching like all great writers.
As a girl, I was breathlessly infatuated. As an artist, I was deeply
bonded. Before Hoss and Shakespeare appeared, I had never felt connected to a
boy on a cerebral level.
In fact, I had mainly seen boys as objects, I must admit. All the boys in my life served
the purpose of making me feel pretty.
These fellas were my actual peers. They had hearts and brains and they thought like
me. They made me feel better than
pretty. They made me feel alive. Shakespeare and Hoss enlightened me to the fact that
there would be more than one guy out there in the world who would encourage me to be my most creative and best authentic self... all the while, making my heart flutter at the same time. Because of them, I have always trusted that love comes with different faces and often where you least expect it. For
this, I will cherish them forever. Each. Separately. Madly.
Though I have been enchanted by quite a few characters in
the summers since, (not to mention the springs…winters… and oh, the falls… ) it
strikes me that romantic love can often be much like the way my mother explained falling
in love with each of her grandchildren as they were born; “You think to
yourself, ‘How can any more love dwell in this space?’ but then your heart just
opens up a whole other room.”
Perhaps the heart is like a “shotgun house.” A modest exterior belies
its depth. Surprises can be found beyond the façade. And you may have to go through many rooms before you've seen it all.
