“Oh new love!” my friend Kelli pined, “It’s so exciting. I miss it! I have to enjoy it vicariously through you. Really, I love being married, but I miss the ‘falling in love’ part, it’s so fun.”
She begged for more details, downright giddy, as I recounted some episode from my “crush-of-the-month” on our way to work. Kelli had been married for a few years, her husband Grant was in medical school and she taught kindergarten at the same rural Virginia elementary school where I taught.
It seemed so improbable to me. Surely marriage with all its fringe benefits was better than some construction worker asking for my number that week. How could she miss those Friday nights waiting for a phone to ring? At the time I didn’t really get it, but now I do.
I took for granted the deliciousness of love in that season: the way a second look, that lingered a moment past casual, could stop me in my tracks and hang in my mind for days; or the way the subtlest touch of someone hand could steal my breath, leave me momentarily hazy, almost paralyzed; the way my head would pop and buzz, with the chemistry of it all, and those punch drunk days after a first kiss. It was funny how someone’s undivided attention could leave me stumbling through my usually unflustered words, and that nervous way I would bite my lip to hold back an all too revealing-smile.
Conversations in those days jumped impetuously from one thing to the next and were always seasoned with witty banter. I revelled in those heady, dreamy days of distraction, where someone was constantly hijacking my attention and, interrupting my thoughts. I rolled out of bed in the mornings, the words of love songs echoed as I pulled on my favorite jeans, swiped mascara on my eyelashes, and bounded out the door wondering how the day would end. At night, I would fall asleep trying to contrive ways to see “him” again, rehearsing dialogues, and replaying in slow motion everything past, digging in for deeper meaning, and telling clues.
The magic of it all hangs and hinges on newness, the yet unknown, some imagined potential of experience. Stirred in with the carefree energy of youth, it is an intoxicating concoction. As much as I was a very level-headed, un-boy crazy girl, I will own up to at least a good two dozen solid crushes in my life and readily admit, few things in life are as delectable, securing a place for them on my top 10 list of the best things in life.
Don’t get me wrong the downsides of crushes are legion. Opposition in all things. No honey without the sting of the bee. Every time a few days passed and that call I hoped for never came. The moments when I’d realize that even my most ardent pull-out-all-the-stops-flirtations were in vain or I’d see “that guy” bringing some other girl home from a date or talking with someone else at a party and I’d realize they really weren’t that into me, the soundtrack of my day could turn quickly from over- the-moon to pensive, with a grey timbre, that matched the dull thud in my stomach just like I got from bad elevators. The reality of new love’s fickle transience seemed the constant in my mostly resilient heart. Quiet nights were spent staring at the ceiling doubting myself, pondering those fresh slights, disappointments, and rejections. Was I really such a bad catch? (Yes, I was once ditched for girl who in her mid-twenties wore zip up footie pajamas like toddlers wear- it did make me question my desirability at the deepest levels.)
Gone are the days of hits, misses, and sometimes kisses. I turned them in to wake up to the same man every day, to be his last call of the day, to have someone love me enough to wash my dishes, give me massages on demand, and tell me I look pretty on Sunday mornings before church. Admittedly our conversations now frequently revolve around things like sink drains and fertilizer spreaders and I often go to bed at night obsessing about that upcoming meeting with the principal or how to get my son to stop sneaking containers of sprinkles and eating them behind the family room chair. When my husband had to write a love poem at the request of our stake president for a function we attended, he compared our love to a 50 pound bucket of wheat (because yep he’s romantic like that). It’s not new love now, it’s love in a different season, it’s love in the afternoon.
While I claim to be quite a pragmatic girl, I will readily admit that songs on the radio make me wistfully romantic, and nostalgic for those days of fresh, young love, perilous, and tenuous, but still so deliciously, blissful, I can almost taste it on my tongue. A reminder that everything is to be enjoyed in it’s season.
So tell me do you miss it or good riddance? What do you think of love in all its seasons? Give me your best description of those “new love” feelings and memories from years past. Give us a page from your life’s romantic folklore- craziest thing you ever did for a crush? Your best dump story (Anyone else dumped for someone who wears footy pjs?) Do dish.
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