Love Is In The Air...
Task 7, February 14 to February 21
“Be easy to love, hard to break, and impossible to forget.” Shihori Obata
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Be still my beating heart! I have been accused of being gruff, short-tempered, scurlish, grumpy, judgemental, insensitive, cold-hearted, unreasonable, testy and as friendly as a dog with distemper, but that is incorrect. I am really kind, affable, friendly (to humans), kind-hearted, emotionally available and happy, especially on Valentine’s Day, when love is in the air!
Rather than take someone or something to task today I have chosen to recount some tales of love. Enjoy, and float through your day on a cloud of amore…
MK. CHEMICAL ENGINEER
My husband and I met on-line, on a dating site, which is not unusual in itself–but I live in Australia and he was in California. We spoke for sometime but a girl had to be practical and I wasn't sure it would work because of the distance, so we stopped talking.
In the month that followed I thought about him a few times. One thing that I kept remembering that was different about him was that he told me "you can talk to whoever you want, but I'm only going to talk to you". Also, he had offered to come to Australia but I told him not to because I thought it was so impossible and expensive for him to travel that distance for someone he didn't even know! But then I had an epiphany– if he wants to come why not let him?
So I reinstated our communication and invited him down under…
The rest is history. He came to Australia and I picked him up - that's another story, I was late. I picked him up in my 2-seater convertible with the top down and then it poured with rain, there wasn't room for his luggage so he held it on his lap and I was so nervous that I got lost on the way home. Anyway we spent 5 days together, on the 5th day we decided we were dating, the next week he asked me to marry him.
That was in 2015. And we’re still married.
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JF. SOCIAL WORKER
My fiancé and I first met on Tinder.
We decided to meet up for the first time on a date at a local restaurant.
As we were talking, over unlimited breadsticks, he mentioned his birthday. January 14th. This is how the rest of the conversation went:
Me: No way, that's my birthday!
Him: Wow! What year?
Me: 1993.
Him: Same! Where were you born?
Me: Oh, Metairie, Louisiana. *shrugging it off almost*
Him: There is no way…. Me too. East Jefferson Hospital?
Me: Yes!
Yes, folks. We were born on the same day, same hospital, same year, 6 hours apart. And we were married April 14th, 2018.
JS. AGING LOTHARIO
33 years ago, in (of all places) a Kroger grocery store in Dallas, I fell in love at first sight with my wife.
33 years later we are still together, two as one, tied together by license, children, and shared goals. Was it easy? No effing way. It’s been a marathon, run in the rain, but enduring.
Of course, it’s never what you think it will be. . . . she laughs when I tell her, “So here you are, married to the man of your dreams.” But was I the man of her dreams? Doubtful, but she is the woman of mine. Every now and then, looking across the room, watching her adjust her readers or straighten her hair, I feel like that young man again, watching a young woman in the freezer aisle of Kroger in Dallas, aware that I am attracted to her, but why? And what do I do about it?
Thank God I acted…and now, all these years later, I fall in love all over again. But this love is deeper, born of all the efforts of conflicts resolved, communication achieved, joy and pain shared. It’s a love that fills all of me and all of my life.
Task: Spend today in love.