Love and Lunch

    He brought me lunch. He loves me. He brought me a root beer. He loves me. He brought my favorite jalapeno kettle chips. He loves me. 

    When you’ve been married as long as we have – more than half our lives – it is the little things that count. Yesterday, my husband of 24 years brought me lunch. He could have brought me a hundred pink roses and it would have the same effect. We sat in the warm sunlight on the back patio and ate this luxurious repast, which was a roast beef sandwich from Roger’s Market. It may as well have been ambrosia and nectar for how it made me feel.
    We married one July afternoon, in Southern California, too young to buy alcohol but old enough to vote. Idealistic and romantic, we tied the knot so that it would never get untied again. We held fast to each other in times of stress and the kinds of difficulties that you can’t escape, even with a full tank of gas. If you think children only add joy to a marriage, try having one or two. Children take the equation of one plus one and put in some exponents and square roots until your simple sum looks like quantum physics. Still, we survived the pressures of parenthood, endured lost jobs and career changes, persisted through remodeling projects and remained steady in our relationship.
    If only I knew of some secret – a nugget of marital wisdom to pass along and offer as proof, but alas there is no mysterious ingredient to being in love and staying that way. But if you’ll think backwards and forward to the thing that brought you together, therein will lie the key to longevity in a relationship. For us it is the “date”, the special moment in time when you are in the middle of it all, and even the very sun appears to revolve around you.
    For us it is taking periods out of the ordinary time and making them special occasions – like the time we went away to a quaint German-influenced town in Texas and lived for two days in a guest house with nothing on our minds or agendas but each other. Or the time we took a cruise to the Bahamas and ran down the ship’s gangplank at eight in the morning to sit on a deserted white-sand beach, feeling the rays of the sun cross the water, and wanting only to preserve that very moment. Or having a surprisingly simple lunch on the sun-warmed patio.
    These are the moments we will remember when we are just an old couple, with white hair and wrinkly faces, wearing tennis shoes with dress socks, and walking down the street holding hands. Love is a funny thing. If the intoxication doesn’t drown you, the ecstasy might.

This piece "Love and Lunch" originally appeared as part of my weekly column in the Hamilton/Morrisville Tribune in 2006.