Dear Friends and Fellow Readers,
Stories With My Songbird is moving to a new web address! I welcome you to follow us there . . . please be patient while the blog is under construction. I welcome your thoughts on the new format!
storieswithmysongbird.com
In peace,
Megan
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
I Love You . . . for Seventy Mental Reasons
“I love you for sentimental reasons . . . I hope you do believe me, I’ve given you my heart ."
Throughout my childhood and teenage years, my father and I regularly danced to this song. Not just at weddings, but veritably every weekend, when, at some point, I would put on Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable, turn it to track 11, and extend my hand to him as he sat on the couch reading. He would spring up, give a tug on his pants at the knees, and for the next 4:30 minutes of our lives we would waltz around the living room like it was nobody’s business . . . a regular Ginger and Fred.
We have long since stopped dancing except at the occasional wedding, yet the song remains a part of my repertoire of expressions in more ways than one.
After my daughter was born, I marveled at the tiny wonders that filled my day, my arms. My attention was grounded in the small details of her and the environment that we moved through; the perpetual pout of her lips, the copse of veins behind her eyelids, how when she was REALLY angry, she cried without making sound for nearly 10 seconds before a shriek exploded forth.
In these long, wonderful hours I became aware that whatever else love is — biological, chemical, sentimental — it is an active celebration of the idiosyncratic in another person, the idiosyncratic in ourselves when we are with them.
Now there is no one to tell when I make all the green lights
I account it on being raised in my particular family that Carolyn's poem, as well as the film, are especially truthful expressions of love. At a very young age I was immersed in a culture of celebrating the idiosyncratic . . . even to this day, conversations with my parents and extended family still regularly turn toward playful anecdotes that highlight the quirkiness of our personalities, our characters. By choosing to focus on the folly, the fanciful in one another and in the most absurdly funny aspects of our relationships, it is as if to say in a resoundingly affirming way "I see you and enjoy you just the same!"
Each night following dinner each of us takes a post-it note and writes at least one little detail about someone else in the family (or the quality of their time with someone else in the family) that they appreciate. (Mom and Dad ask three year old Pads, and record what he says. . . which is fun enough given some of his answers!) It doesn’t matter how silly or irreverent the detail is . . . in fact, the more absurd the better. Having written them down, we fold them up and place them in Valentines boxes we’ve decorated for ourselves.
No matter what we find when we open up those boxes on Valentines day, the outcome of our reflection will be two-fold with each person having been given not one, but two invaluable gifts: a testimonial of seventy strange or not so strange reasons why we are loved, as well as a stronger attention to the ways in which each others' presence have been mapped through our lives.
Throughout my childhood and teenage years, my father and I regularly danced to this song. Not just at weddings, but veritably every weekend, when, at some point, I would put on Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable, turn it to track 11, and extend my hand to him as he sat on the couch reading. He would spring up, give a tug on his pants at the knees, and for the next 4:30 minutes of our lives we would waltz around the living room like it was nobody’s business . . . a regular Ginger and Fred. We have long since stopped dancing except at the occasional wedding, yet the song remains a part of my repertoire of expressions in more ways than one.
After my daughter was born, I marveled at the tiny wonders that filled my day, my arms. My attention was grounded in the small details of her and the environment that we moved through; the perpetual pout of her lips, the copse of veins behind her eyelids, how when she was REALLY angry, she cried without making sound for nearly 10 seconds before a shriek exploded forth. In these long, wonderful hours I became aware that whatever else love is — biological, chemical, sentimental — it is an active celebration of the idiosyncratic in another person, the idiosyncratic in ourselves when we are with them.
“I love you for sentimental reasons. . .” meet “I love you for seventy mental reasons.”
In Rob Reiner's classic New York romance When Harry Met Sally, when Harry professes his love to his long time friend, he does so by way of naming her idiosyncrasies:
I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
It’s a great moment in a great film . . . the boy gets the girl with whom he should have been all along . . . AND realizes at the get-go that her neuroses, fears, and habituations are not merely tolerable or endearing but part of the whole whatness of who she is.
Carolyn Jevelian, a fellow poet whom I met and worked with last summer up in Door County, wrote a beautiful elegy to her late husband Stephen using the same technique. She celebrates her love by naming the exquisite beauty of his quirks:
Little Things
He took pills without water. He ate his morning cereal with a large spoon to save time.
He drank half coke/ half water.
He was thrilled making all the green lights on his commute.
We celebrated when the odometer turned over another hundred thousand miles.
Now there is no one to tell when I make all the green lights
or when my odometer reaches a historic number.
And now I use the big spoon.
I account it on being raised in my particular family that Carolyn's poem, as well as the film, are especially truthful expressions of love. At a very young age I was immersed in a culture of celebrating the idiosyncratic . . . even to this day, conversations with my parents and extended family still regularly turn toward playful anecdotes that highlight the quirkiness of our personalities, our characters. By choosing to focus on the folly, the fanciful in one another and in the most absurdly funny aspects of our relationships, it is as if to say in a resoundingly affirming way "I see you and enjoy you just the same!" This year, as Valentine’s Day approaches, our family is actively recording the seventy mental reasons why we love each other.
Each night following dinner each of us takes a post-it note and writes at least one little detail about someone else in the family (or the quality of their time with someone else in the family) that they appreciate. (Mom and Dad ask three year old Pads, and record what he says. . . which is fun enough given some of his answers!) It doesn’t matter how silly or irreverent the detail is . . . in fact, the more absurd the better. Having written them down, we fold them up and place them in Valentines boxes we’ve decorated for ourselves.No matter what we find when we open up those boxes on Valentines day, the outcome of our reflection will be two-fold with each person having been given not one, but two invaluable gifts: a testimonial of seventy strange or not so strange reasons why we are loved, as well as a stronger attention to the ways in which each others' presence have been mapped through our lives.
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