Too old for romance?

Happy Valentine's Day, or as we used to say at Bains Elementary, Valentime's Day. I woke up this morning to the following e-mailed birthday greeting from a certain Miss Minkoff back East:

As you butt against the inevitable doom of middle age, may your ill-fitted Levy pants not hamper Fortuna's desire to spin you silly today.

Right back atcha, thou minx. May your name be inscribed on the Big Chief Tablet of Life. (P.S. Come to think of it, perhaps we've all misjudged Rowan, who, after all, was only marching, symbolically, for Moorish dignity.)

Anyway.

So today I'm 41 (there will be white Burgundy at dinner tonight in celebration), and an NPR interview I heard last night on the drive home from work made me realize whoa I'm definitely in middle age. From the text version of NPR's chat with writer Jeffrey Eugenides, editor of a new anthology of romantic short stories:

The novelist says he considers himself "too old" to be a romantic anymore.

"I was terribly romantic as a youth, and I think I retain a portion of that romanticism.

"I'm a father and a husband, and I find that as life goes on, the kind of youthful romanticism changes into a deeper kind of, familial romanticism that is not really something so often written about in these kinds of stories," he says.

I thought: yeah, you right. Seriously, Eugenides' words reminded me of a thought I had on the drive home the previous night. I had popped in an unmarked mix CD I'd once made, and heard Van Morrison's "Moondance." It's really one of the all-time great romantic songs, but I was startled by how little it affected me on this listen. Once upon a time, "Moondance" sent me soaring, but not so much now. And I don't think it's simply a matter of familiarity. That song is the song of youthful ardor, of artful recklessness in the pursuit of amor. And I am not so young anymore; it doesn't speak to me as it once did.

And you know, I'm happy with that. Maybe even relieved. There is something pathetic about people my age and older who still cling desperately to emotions and emotional stances more appropriate to the young and the innocent. Eugenides said that Saul Bellow, married four times, was capable of getting weepy over his girlfriends at age 60; Eugenides said that was either admirable or embarrassing. I think he sided with embarrassing. I know I would.

As soon as I realized how I'd gone off of "Moondance," I was immediately seized with "the thrill is gone" fears. But they were quickly dispelled by the realization that I no longer want thrills. I used to be one for grand gestures; once, before we had children, I secretly bought two plane tickets and, having conspired with Julie's boss to surprise her, told her abruptly one day after work to "get packed," and whisked her off to England for an impromptu vacation. Whee! We had lots of whee moments back then, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

But three kids later, who has the energy for whee! anymore? Who wants whee! Not us. Julie and I were talking last night about how much our concept of what's romantic has changed over our years together. Eugenides' term "familial romanticism" is just right to describe where we are in our lives. I used to get stoked on the idea of taking Julie to the perfect little French cafe, and speaking torridly of romantic matters over candlelight and good wine. I wouldn't mind having the time to do that now (we'll talk about that when Nora quits nursing), but you know, it's hard to describe the fulfillment of opening the front door at day's end, and hearing three little voices scream "Daddy!" in unison, and come running into the front room to give me a hug. God, I love that. That's how romance has been sublimated for me. That's what it's ripened into. And it's great. We agreed that the contentment of doing something as simple as making a good fire in the fireplace on a cold winter's night, or lying in bed together late, with all the kids asleep in the house, and both of us reading our books, was really, really wonderful. The best, actually. Neither one of us would have said so 10 years ago, because we were different people then.

I mean, if 31-year-old me had heard someone talk like that , I would have thought, oh no, how depressing is that? I would have resolved never to let romance go, no matter what. You couldn't have explained to me the pleasures of domesticity, and the romance of nesting. As Eugenides grasps, those things typically don't make it into stories. Julie and I talked last night about how unsettling it can be in our culture, which prizes passion and makes a fetish of youth, to realize that most of the conventional elements of romance have receded in one's life, but that one is blissfully happy all the same. Life has its seasons, and living in an eternal springtime would be both unnatural and, frankly, boring. I knew that there had been some kind of equinox in our married life when Julie, frustrated, stood next to me on a streetcorner on the Upper East Side one Sunday afternoon, and said, "I just...I just...I mean, we should be doing something with our lives, we should be making something, we should--"

"You want to have a baby."

"NO! Well, maybe."

And so the world turned, and we did have a baby, and life got even better, in ways we couldn't have anticipated or understood in the flush of our newlywed ardor. But it was time for that, time to mature, time to let our love ripen, and time to burrow deeper into life's bounty, beyond the delightful but superficial pleasures of being young and in love.

Being middle-aged and in love has its own appropriate pleasures. The world considers them shopworn and modest, perhaps, but I think they're better described as discreet, and as banked against the tumult of life's lengthy days. We don't dance by the light of the moon much anymore, my true love and I, but we do sit on the porch swing by its light, and watch the kids chase fireflies, and contemplate our blessedness together. It's enough. In fact, it's everything. There's nothing quite so reassuring as the conviction that one is standing exactly where one is supposed to be.