Monthly Archives: February 2009

Valentine’s At the Movies


Given the  plethora of chick flicks there are to choose from and the fact that I more often than not subject my loving husband to estrogen laden movie fare, you might wonder what was on the dvd watching menu for this weekend of love.

Cowboys. Stage coach robbery. And America’s first official generation of post traumatically stressed war veterans.

In short, 3:10 to Yuma.

And now some of my gentle readers are thinking “wow, what a great wife you are.” However, after the movie was over and I queried Rob about his level of enjoyment his response was,

“This was a complete disappointment.”

Whew, and I thought it was just me who saw the credibility head south when Peter Fonda’s character was gut shot at point blank range and 15 minutes later was practically doing a jig as he helped escort Russell Crowe’s Oedipal outlaw to meet the prison train.

Homo-eroticism abounds*  in the shape of Crowe’s right hand man and I still don’t get why Crowe went all mushy at the end over Christian Bale’s gimp Civil War tale, but I did my part for Valentine’s sake.

*It’s really not a “guy” movie if the bonding doesn’t cross a line or two.

A Funny Little Valentine


A day early, I know, but I don’t blog on Saturday anymore as a rule and I couldn’t let the holiday slide by unobserved or opined upon.

When I was shopping at the Safeway on Wednesday, I couldn’t help but notice the veritable garden of blooms. balloons and stuffies that had sprung up in the floral department since my visit the week before. It spilled into the checkout lanes and encroached on produce. Because the day began “froggy”* and frigid, I had to whip out the camera and snap a few shots. It was like spring was on display like a weekend home show and I wanted to capture it and save it for the bleak winter days we still have to endure.

It’s not that bad of course. The days are longer. The sun is up before the school bus arrives and doesn’t set until nearly six in the evening, reminding me of the near white nights of June and July we will certainly enjoy. 

And the cold snaps are not as cold nor do they last as long. Winter is beginning its tug of war with Spring, and she will win as she always does.

I was reminded by a commenter this week that two years ago, I was falling in love – unbeknownst to just about everyone who knew me because there was so much more to it than simply falling in love. That is not something one does innocently a second time regardless of how the first love ended.

And why do we do it at all?

That’s a question that has come up too.

Why, even in the face of reality, do we bother?

I know for a number of years in my younger days, I didn’t. Bother that is. I simply went along with my business and interacted only as much as I was obligated to for purposes of making a living and maintaining family relations and existing friendships. 

I can’t say that life was better that way. The non-risking way. I wasn’t happier or safer. And so, eventually I bothered again with mixed results, but am I supposed to win every time? Or even at all? And is it really about winning? And is winning sailing through life without rippling the water or being caught in the wake of events? He who dies having gone through the least amount of trauma wins?

When I encounter people whose lives seem more charmed than my own, I tend to think of them as lucky. But are they, really? Because maybe I am the one who is really benefitting from this plane of existence we call life.

As Rob and I were hanging up from our morning phone call, we exchanged “I love you’s” as we normally do and he added after mine,

“And that’s why we bother.”

We bother because we love our partners, our parents, our children, our friends, our pets, our siblings and their children. We love. Therefore, we bother. Even when it hurts and knowing that it will possibly hurt again. 

 

*When BabyD was little, she would say “frog” instead of “fog”. “Look Mama, it’s very froggy out today.” like the weather was a bit hoarse or something.

Memories


Light the corners of my mind is I think how it goes, but there are spaces I would just as soon leave dark. But I live in the world and I roam far and wide, both in real time and on the blogosphere, and I run across people and situations that cause lights to go on in rooms I never purposely visit anymore.

I was reading a blog, as is my wont, and the blogger mentioned that a remarried friend’s husband is very ill. This friend is pregnant and, coincidentally, about as far along as I was with BabyD when I realized that Will was sick.  I didn’t know how sick or what was wrong, and it would take well over a year to convince doctors that I was right and they were wrong, but that’s when it all began. And I remembered how it felt to be pregnant and know that your husband was very sick, and I felt terribly for this woman whom I don’t even know.

And it plays too into my worst fears of “what if?” because this woman has been down the road before and like me, and Rob, took a chance when she fell in love again and embarked on a new life. We do this knowingly, but with our fingers crossed behind our backs and buoyed by the odds that most couples do not experience the death of a partner young and that our first experiences bucked that trend and the odds of it happening again are very low.

But it isn’t impossible.

Bad things happen. Sometimes over and over and to people who are wonderful and undeserving in every way imaginable.

This just highlights a nagging fear that I never quite manage to lock the closet door on.