Valentine’s Day Thoughts: Romance And Reality

It’s been a year of weddings in our family.  My sister, my sister-in-law, and my sister-in-law’s sister are all getting married within a fourteen months of each other, while another sister teeters on the brink of engagement.  Love, marriage and caterers are in the air.

I attended one of these nuptials last September.  My husband, SJ, and I were enjoying our first adults-only weekend since 2005, with the kids safely stowed away with friends.

I examined the wedding program after settling into our pew.  On the first page was a beautiful poem* that I assume was meant to capture the couple’s love for each other.  It spoke of romance, passion, mutual adoration, and lovers bathed in the light of pole stars through eternity.   

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.”

In short, it was a love poem obvously written before the sleepless nights, leaky diapers, and stretch marks of parenthood.

But wait before you scoff.