It's all good. It just is.
Love of family -- even when the obligations of same are enormous.
Love of nature and green growing things, especially when you've sprouted them from seed and throw down your body before the leaf borers, spider mites, and mold.
Love of new information, however acquired, in whatever tantalizes your geekiest impulses.
Love of neighborliness in those folks you see in quotidian life, the bag boys who, you discover, were also punk rockers ages ago and never expected to live this long, or the owner of the used book shop where you exchange your books and she, too, is hopelessly in love with Orson Wells, circa 1947 (and boy, is Rita Hayworth going to be pissed).
Love shared with classmates from high school who remember when we were all Serious Thespians and we drove aimlessly around our little town drinking bourbon from pint bottles, talking about Tennessee Williams and Stanislavsky.
Love between those same classmates when we laugh about where we are now -- estrogen-deprived and middle-aged and still misfits.
Love in gatherings of friends, feeding them, entertaining them, giving of oneself and saying, yes, this is good.
Love of the furry companions who ask only our continued presence and attention.
Love of those we've met along the way in shared pursuits, opera, travel, books, food, cooking, life.
Love of a city, a perfume, a sensation, the taste of foie gras.
Love -- the knowing one can love, that it is not dead, the familiar and the strange and the scary bravery in saying, yes, this is another beloved and I will defend and protect and enjoy this human, this animal, this plant, this commonality.
Love.
I'm letting myself do this again. I'm letting myself continue. I'm finding that those I loved first I loved most, and even if there is no chance for the expected norm of love-partnership-cohabitation-legal ties (marriage or whatever legal construct is appropriate) -- saying this, this is all good. I will embrace the temporary neediness without expectation. I will enjoy the now and the future nows with patience. I will stand astonished at the way life works and how little, and how much, one changes over 40 (gasp) years.
There are times when it is so easy to love, and love beyond limitation, that it has to be right and fuck the rules -- one surrenders.
Dear readers, Devoted Readers, this is the first time in 4 years of blogging I have slipped to the level of such sentiment. But I can, unafraid, unashamed, without future promise and in the now, say that I love not only family, bag boys, classmates, my garden and pets, I love a human being with all my heart.
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