Sweet Love

Fabric of Love February 10 2010


Love is found – a gift that just appears one day,

Glitters, invites us to pick it up;

Relationship, though, is art.

It’s woven of moments shared,

Of kindly thoughts and gentle deeds –

Helping, consoling, supporting, surprising --

Sharing meals, spinning memories,

Inventing celebrations, improvising answers,

Relaxing into giggles and blending tears.

Its fabric requires solid truth, precise attention,

Spools of tender care and gentle touch.

Together, two weavers transform the treasure found

Into rich, brocaded bliss.



Reflection:

Relationships go a long way toward assuaging the loneliness that we experience in our earthly life. Like any skill or craft, they are as demanding as they are rewarding. Finding a person with whom we can build a solid relationship is a pure gift from the divine. Relationships themselves, however, develop moment by moment, a fabric woven of the thoughts, acts, and agreements that the two people invest in them. Through these investments, the individuals create both themselves and each other – learning, risking, revisiting, communicating – growing in understanding, in strength, and in the power to love.

Ellen wisely taught me that things that didn’t seem to work very well in a relationship could be considered “speed bumps” – jarring us out of complacency, slowing us down, forcing us to pay attention and to communicate. Even the most formidable-seeming speed bumps seemed always to crumble into manageable adjustments once we had discussed them and considered likely alternatives. That was such a refreshing experience after a lifetime of seemingly unbridgeable gulfs between partners – leading to inaccurate assumptions, resentments based on untruth, misinterpretations by each partner of the other person’s intentions and thoughts.

Ellen and I argued often in the early days of our relationship. Each time we did, we both felt absolutely miserable – it felt as though together we had fallen through a crack into Hell.

After a while, we began to realize that we had catapulted each other back into a childhood space, where we felt unloved and unloveable as a result of what seemed like our mother’s disapproval of us – an experience we had both shared. Our respective mothers were not ogres, although our interpretations of their moments of disapproval had led us to assume we would never earn their approval, and therefore were abandoned. We were making the same assumptions with each other, as older adults.

I could only conclude that if I had felt like that as a small child, I had indeed experienced emotional Hell. I suppose all children do, since children seem able to melt into a state of momentarily hopeless despair after many small disappointments.

Once we realized what was happening, it became easier and easier to remember that we were no longer small, powerless children at the mercy of the adults around us. We could talk about what we thought was going on, find out how erroneous our assumptions were – I think 100% of the time – and find reasonable and relatively painless ways in which we could jointly change the situation so that it worked for us.

An additional crucial piece of information came when a friend loaned us a copy of a book called “Ethnicity and Family Therapy.” The book contained chapters on most of the common ethnic cultures from which American families derived in the mid to late twentieth century. We eagerly looked up the chapters on our own families of origin, so we could see how accurate we thought the essays were. Ellen read the presentation on Eastern European Jews and was as impressed as I was after reading the chapters on Irish and English American families. We then read each others’ chapters. What an eye-opener!

We learned that approximately 98% of our squabbles and misunderstandings arose from not understanding each others’ ethnic cultures and their expression, and had little or nothing to do with us as individuals. This was a major relief. Once we knew these ethnic variables existed, we learned to set them aside so we could focus on the real differences between us, discover what they were, and talk over what would be the best way to minimize them so we were both happy.

It took us about three years to navigate the above relationship shoals, and then we were truly able to enjoy an exceptionally close and harmonious relationship for the rest of our time together. It was as if our joined ship had passed through the hazards of rocks and reefs close to the coast from which we had departed. Most of the rest of our cruise together (aside from the storms of illness) was beautiful, with gentle winds, brilliant sun, blue sky, and fluffy clouds. What a blessing this was! If we had been a lot younger and less experienced with difficult relationships and how they hadn’t worked, we probably would have needed much longer to reach the beautiful, refreshing days together at sea.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, I think of the sweetness of loving someone special, as Ellen and I did, and am thankful to have had that wonderful experience with her. We truly enjoyed sharing our lives with each other, and found great joy in greeting the world as a couple rather than as two individuals.

Sweet Love February 12 2010

Love is sweet as mother’s milk,

As rich as fine chocolate,

As tender as a rose petal.

In love, we sprout wings of joy,

Soaring beyond ashen pain and rocky reefs,

Feeling cherished, beloved, embraced – by both God and fellow souls.

The moments spent together melt our edges,

Part the wall between our soul and heaven,

Give us foretastes of eternal bliss.