A Sunday kind of love
Friday, March 26, 2010 at 01:44PM 
Romance. Photo Jennifer Weber 2010I'm the poster child for hopeless romantic.
What's that you say? I'm simply hopeless?
Well, incurable romantic, then.
When it comes to romantic love, you can't get it sappy enough for me. Impossible.
To quote Mary Engelbreit: Too much of a good thing is wonderful.
(Unless you're talking about a Nicholas Sparks novel -- or the unfortunate movie adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel.)
There is, after all, an exception to every rule.
But I digress.
For example -- and this is the truth so listen up -- I sense romance in the produce department at the grocery store.
Like I said, no lie, and I'll thank you not to snicker.
I look at cauliflower and see a bridal bouquet. The apples are blushing flirtatiously; the bell peppers are canoodling in the cool mist. Nobody can convince me otherwise.
We live in a disposable society.
If you are out and about and you happen to see me, go ahead and tell yourself you can read my mind ... because you can.
Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, I'm thinking about romance.
If I'm not doing that, of course I am praying. For you.
You know how most little girls dream of someday being a bride? I wasn't that kind of little girl.
As a girl I dreamt of being loved as passionately as Mr. Rochester loved Jane Eyre.
I dreamt of a Heathcliff-and-Cathy variety of romance; the kind that endures past even the gossamer scrim of time and mortality.
I've been known to brood for hours over the eternal love of Captain Gregg for Lucy Muir.
(I still cry when Lucy's young, beautiful ghost rises up from her old, withered body and she rejoins her late lamented but still-faithful man, and the door to her house by the sea opens all by itself and they walk out into the clouds, holding hands.)
That's what I'm talking about.
We live in a disposable society. Life is no longer precious, and neither are commitments. People take sacred vows before God and everybody, then break them at whatever point in time it becomes expedient for them to do so.
Things didn't work out in your marriage? Hey, don't waste your time grieving over that failure! Better yet, don't even consider it a failure. Move on, and the sooner the better.
Half of marriages end in divorce; am I right? It's no big deal anymore.
Besides, everybody who matters knows you're not to blame. It was the other person.
(News flash: God's law of sowing and reaping applies to marriage. As in, you get what you give.)
But that's how we roll in this brave new heartless world where hardly anything or anyone is safe ... even in places where once upon a time a person could take safety at least a little bit for granted, like the womb and the school room and the church house and the Christian home.
Still crazy after all these years.
By the way ... when I did begin fantasizing about marriage, I fixed my hopes on achieving an Austenesque "incandescent" one.
Because I know that, although Miss Austen's heroines are fictional, those kinds of marriages do exist.
For purely magical romantic mystery, only a few occasions in my life rival the moment when I looked through the little oblong window in the vestibule door at Forrest Hills Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia, at high noon on June 16, 1979, and saw TG standing at the altar, waiting for me.
Standing there tall and handsome in black cutaway tails, waiting for me to come to him so that he could make me his wife.
Because although he probably could have survived without me, he didn't want to.
Why, he told me just the other day ... never mind. Suffice it to say that if he can be believed, he'd still rather not live without me. And God in heaven knows, I won't make it without him either.
Still crazy after all these years.
Thanks babe, for giving me a Sunday kind of love. You're not perfect and neither is your wife, but you'll do until something better comes along ... and I can say that without a trace of irony because I know full well that nothing better ever will.
How many husbands and wives who haven't made it and who won't make it, could -- if they purposed in their respective hearts to grant one another a Sunday kind of love?
It's the one thing everyone wants to get ... and which everyone has the power to give.
If only they would.
NOTE: I apologize for the offensive Google ads that appear on the YouTube. I hate them but I've tried everything and cannot figure out how to remove the code. Just click the little "x" and it'll go away.
Reader Comments (4)
Awww, great post! And thank you for stating the truth.
I've always wanted a Mr. Darcy/Elizabeth Bennet kind of love. Hating each other at the start and then as time goes on you just can't deny your devotion, love and passion for each other. "You have bewitched me, body and soul...and I love you." (sigh) I'm still waiting to hear that.
Audge, you may not hear those very words, but you'll hear words to that effect. Count on it. And when it's right and pure and the depth of feeling is there, it's well worth the wait.
p.s. Darcy and Elizabeth sure went at it hammer and tongs at the beginning, didn't they? But what a moment when the truth comes out and they both know they're hopelessly and eternally bound to one another. Good stuff.
Congrats. I know more who've tried and failed, than have succeeded in building that house of romance, room by room, built on promises made, kept, tears, confusion, debate, and a whole lot of heart and commitment that, no matter the intensity of the storm, it will be ridden out to the sunshine.
I likely lost my best chance a quarter century ago; then again, last I knew, she was happily married to the guy who won the competition I lost for her heart. And back then, I walked away, wounded that I'd lost, yet trying to find solace in the thought that if what I felt for her was real, I would accept her choice.
Time came that I finally did.
So I reckon that once, I really loved.
If never again, I can say at the end, once, I really loved. And that's okay.
Skunky, you made me cry. Happens often when I "read" you, but usually you have me cracking up to the point I'm crying the other kind of tears ... the funny-bone-tickling kind.
I have a feeling you'll love again.
And don't forget ... you'll always have Seymour!