Let's Talk About Love

Talk about LOVE…

 

This weekend I learned (again, for the third time) that you CAN be a “little bit pregnant”. Unfortunately our Mothers were misinformed when they gave us our sex ed talk.

 

Being a “little bit pregnant” is like being a little bit lost in a dark wood. You might be close to the road, but if you are lost you will feel miles away from it. 

 

Sometimes it’s important to go into those places that scare you.

 

When you are forced to go to that dark place, you learn who stands beside you, and who runs for cover. You learn who’s hand you can hold, who you can cry to and who you can form a survival plan with. When you get lost, you discover who is there for you, who is missing you, and who will do their damnedest to save you. 

 

My husband held me for FOUR hours while I struggled through this dark place. I felt like all my blood was leaving me (and in some ways it was) but I’ve never felt so safe in all of my life. 

 

This is LOVE.

 

This is a man who would travel to that scary, cold place and come find me there. This is a man who has taught me to TRUST, to open up to another, and to recognize my power …and humor in the darkest of moments. 

 

I think of all the little things he has done, and all the big things, in our first year of marriage…

My Catholic husband has walked up the hill in a snowstorm to surprise me with candles for my menorah at Hanukkah. While this seems trivial, it was his way of recognizing that our faiths could blend together in this union.

 

My big bear of a boy has brought “offerings” to our neighbors’ Buddha. Our neighbor has a great faith in Buddha and has erected a small sanctuary in her dry cleaning shop. She said that if you bring Buddha some small bananas, then He will be pleased by your offering, and thus grant your wish. One day this summer, her daughter was running her shop, and in walks my husband and puts some bananas on the top shelf of Buddha’s shrine. No one told our friend they were there. I guess Buddha doesn’t actually EAT them, because in about three weeks the shop wreaked of rotten fruit and there were flies everywhere! They have never forgotten our openness,(or our naivete) and I am charmed by this story every time I think of it. My Man is born and bred Boston. He’s faith lies with his mother, the women in his life, the Red Sox and his G-d. However, for me, he would bring tiny bananas to a golden Buddha statue in a neighbor’s dry cleaning shop. He would do this to honor our wish for a child, because it is my HOPE that someone is listening….

 

I think of these things and they take me out of that dark place, and into the arms of the man I was meant to be with. A newlywed, at 41. Somehow it’s not that scary anymore.

 

Wishing you joy and good fortune and LOVE.