I fear I am a romantic at heart . . . which is nothing bad I suppose. I love to see a young couple in love, clinging on to each others hands . . . looking at each other with a love which just seeps out and lets everyone around them know . . . this is a couple in love. It's a beautiful thing to witness . . . one cannot help but smile to see it. It reminds me of when I, too . . . was young and all of the tender feelings of the heart that I had in those years. Young love . . . it is a special love, unlike any other . . .
Then too . . . there is old love, which I find even more beautiful in some respects.
Is this a love that has stood the test of time . . . experienced ups and downs, tears and joys, gains and losses, trials and tribulations . . . and yet . . . like, the cream in a bucket of milk . . . risen to the top?
Are these two lovers . . . who once loved when limbs were nimble, and faces fresh . . . but whom circumstance tore apart . . . and now they have found each other again, and recaptured the love of their youth??
Or . . . are these two older people who have loved . . . and lost, perhaps even many times . . . but who have not given up on love, or it's promise and are not afraid to grab hold of the brass ring for this last turn around the merry-go-round of life???
I don't know. I like to think it's all three . . .
As beautiful as young love is . . . there is something every bit as beautiful, if not more beautiful about elderly love.
But then . . . I am biased . . . just a tad . . .
On Sunday, Todd and I will celebrate twelve years of wedded bliss, and they have been very, very good years. I had never hoped in my lifetime to ever find a yin to my yang . . . I thought that boat had passed me by . . . forever lost. But I was wrong.
This is not the hearts and flowers . . . love of youth . . . love which claims the heart and which is prone to fickleness . . . based on looks and other superficial things. (Not that that love can't grow into deeper love. It often does and that is beautiful too.)
This is the "I waited a lifetime to find you" kind of love . . . no less radiant than youthful love, but based on much deeper things than I once looked for . . .
This is being able to share those deepest yearnings and parts of me that I have never ever been able to share with anyone else . . . and to know that they are safe in his hands . . .
Knowing that we have both made mistakes in the past, and we both have failed . . . but this time is for keeps, because it is based on deeper things . . . we truly like each other, and love being together . . . and it is a love not based purely on, or hampered by, the physical . . . although his cheeky smile makes still me giggle, and I love that little crinkle in his cheek just next to his mouth . . .
And sometimes my heart aches because there is so much we missed out on . . . having a family together being the main thing . . . but I know that it will all be right in the end, and I love that we are sealed together for time and all eternity, not just death do we part.
Cos there's nobody on earth I would rather spend eternity with . . .
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
~William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
There's a delicious Salad and a Jamie Oliver Cookbook Giveaway on offer over in The English Kitchen today.
Have a great day everyone. It's Friday, which means Saturday is not far behind!
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