Friday, Valentine’s Day, we’ll celebrate love. Finding someone to love that loves you back has to be one of life’s major miracles.
I’ve been watching our glowing, granddaughter, Katelyn, try on wedding gowns. September nuptials will unite her with Sean, the fellow she met while they were students at Elmhurst College. It’s fun to note the similarities and differences between their courtship in the 2000s and ours in the 1950s.
Kenny and I were teenage schoolmates when he asked me to ride the Ferris wheel at a village summer festival. He became my “steady.” We’ve been sitting across the breakfast table from one another for more than sixty years.
Cupid’s arrow may strike anywhere at any time. During a trip to Kauai, Hawaii, to visit a mutual friend, my companion, Gloria, and I stayed at Michael and Sondra’s bed and breakfast. He was a Native Hawaiian and she was a blonde from Boston, Massachusetts. During a vacation from her job, she’d flown more than five thousand miles to visit The Islands. After returning home, she couldn’t forget the young man she’d met there.
Some of us find love more than once. My friend, Joyce, a widow, recently celebrated her eightieth birthday. Two days later, she married, Sid, a widower. They’d met across a card table playing euchre at a senior citizens’ center.
Not every couple who falls in love marries. When people have lived more than fifty years, complications from their pasts may intervene. My sister-in-law, Lola Mae, a widow who resided here in Durand and Butch, who was divorced and made his home in Farmington, sustained their engagement ’til death do us part. To spend weekends together, they took turns driving the 125 miles that separated them.
Do we experience love in different ways at various ages? Probably, but a smile from the person we adore gives each of us a warm, fuzzy feeling.
How did you fall in love?