This year Valentine's Day opens to a snowing scene, the beauty of winter still with us. I can hear a dove cooing outside. Jamie and I used to call each other "love dove". But I'm not feeling sentimental or sad today. I have had 4 years to observe my society of friends and family and how they react to my still single situation. For the first year I had a reprieve. And then gradually it started. "Oh, you really need a man." "We need to fix you up with someone". And the crueler missives from the family. "Do you and Muriel play bridge together? How about Elder Hostel? Too bad you're not older, you could get some old guy who just wants you to boil him a egg. Want to join my writer's group? (average age: 85)". I have cut off communication from most of the meannies, but unfortunately, I have to stay nice to the old lady, my mother in law, who begins or ends every conversation with "How's your love life, or Have you got a fella yet?"
I have become keenly aware of several things in the last several years. One reason people are disparate to pair up in this society is that it gives the individual value. To be in a couple, to be in a marriage, or a relationship is to say to the world, "Look, I have worth. Someone chose me. There is actually another human being on the planet that can take my bad habits and idiosyncracies and still love me." This is particularly true of women but I suspect it is also true of men. People want to have worth. They want to mean something on this planet. So we couple up and go forth, walking among the other couples who are like us, who have value, credibility. Couples become smug. They hear of the death of a friend's spouse and hold each other tighter. "Thank God that didn't happen to us.." They pay their respects, and slip back into their cars, in their appointed places, and go home, and shut the door, open up some wine, and find the remote. Duty done. After an obligatory lunch date, back to the couples world where everything is safe, and they ignore that ghost at the door. The inevitable boulder that will drop on one of them no matter what they do to forestall it.
When I was little, my parents would play a record for me called "Classics for Children." One of my favorites was Diana and the Golden Apples. It told the story (to Prokofiev Lt. Kije), of Diana who was the fastest runner in ancient Greece. Melanion wanted to marry her and could only do it if he beat her in a race. The race started and Melanion threw down golden apples in her path, which she scooped up. They slowed her down and Melanion won the race and won Diana.
I would have kept running.
