Too old for romance?
Thursday February 14, 2008
Categories: Culture
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...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Wait until they grow a little more and discover what an utter boob you are.
Your revenge? Anything you say or do can and will embarrass them.
Ron,as to that feckless arse Rowan,would it be alright to beat him about the head with a brick?
Thanks Rod, for this beautiful, thoughtful tribute to the real world of love that those of a certain age and a certain condition (i.e.: married) should expect and indeed look forward to.
I'll be 40 this year, and I don't think I'm at all plagued by midlife forebodings or crises. Simple content is wonderful: hugs from the wife and the kids (all four of them, all girls), reading books together, taking bike rides, good conversation, telling jokes, sitting together in church--these are all enough for me. Usually, that is. I can't deny that over the past six months or so, I've been trying to shake things up at little; I guess I've been looking for a little more whee in our lives. Does that suggest a false romanticism? I sometimes wonder if I'm occasionally dwelling too much, in my imagination, in a world that I outgrew about twenty years ago. I hope not though. Being "young at heart" is overrated in general, I think (hell, I've always looked forward to being older than I am; I wanted grey hair when I was in my twenties), but that doesn't mean reaching back in time and grabbing hold of some of that whee spirit now and again isn't a good idea; it might be, sometimes, for a marriage, a necessary thing.
Anyway, thanks again, and happy Valentine's Day!
You're right, Russell, and that's why we're going to have a special bottle of wine tonight, and a special dinner to mark the day, as opposed to iced tea and pot roast (which I happen to love, by the way). I think Julie and I have managed to work enough whee! into our lives on an ordinary basis to keep things interesting. I'll come home with flowers for no good reason on a Friday night, or I'll get home to find that Julie has made something unusual, out of a spirit of generosity and, well, whee! We've gotten into the habit of having a bottle of Champagne every few weeks for no reason other than whee! life is good.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that we've learned to be content, and to find joy not despite the difficult parts of marriage and family life, but through them. Most days both of us could do without the shitty diapers, the snotty noses, the bickering between the boys, and so forth. But you can't separate those from a truly abundant life, and I wouldn't want to. This morning I was sitting at my computer reading a last e-mail before going off to work, and I heard this tiny soft voice on the bed behind me: "Daddy?" Nora was just waking up (she nurses through the night still, and sleeps with us), and hearing that little voice utter its first word of the day, and that word is my name ... well, April in Paris is divine, but life doesn't get much more fulfilling than that, at least not for me.
But I do love me some whee!, and will put up a post inviting whee!fulness momentarily...
Happy Birthday Rod-- my wife's birthday is today too! Makes for an expensive day for me ; ), but it's all worth it. Lovely post.
HA. Happy birthday to you, Rod. My brother is also a Valentine's boy--yesterday was his birthday. But it is to laugh, hearing you baby-faced forty-somethings carry on wisely about the staid pleasures of middle age. Oh, man. If only I were forty again--so young and foolish as I was then. When I turned forty, I thought nothing of it. Though a friend did remark, "What's the matter with you, girl? Oh--I know. You're FORTY--and it's kickin' yo BUTT!" Wise words I've often reflected on.
Let me tell you, it's not having dear little children that will rock your world--it's when they suddenly blossom into gigantic, beautiful teenagers bestriding the world like colossi, bursting at the seams with all that tempestuous passion that you believed you had outlived, that you will suddenly feel very much older and smaller. I'm not saying "just you wait," because this too is a beautiful thing. But I am saying that you may have occasion later in life to re-evaluate all these domesticated premises. Maybe that's just a nice way of saying it will kick yo BUTT. Not that there's anything wrong with that. . . .
It's great when events make you re-evaluate your premises, because that means you're still alive, still learning and growing. Storms bend the boughs of great trees, while potted plants remain tranquil. Try to remember that when your oldest child gets a driver's license . . . .
Yes, those domestic pleasures like reading aloud to your children and waking up in bed next to the one you love best are keener and sweeter than any outsider could know. Just don't forget that, as Bob Seger says, "there's a house inside a house . . . there's a dream within a dream." Or, as Mr. Sig always says, "There's more to life than reality!" As long as you keep the wildness in your heart, you can blow that fire alight from time to time, and it will keep burning. That is the fire where I forged what I needed when hard times came. That's what worked for us, anyway.
Happy Birthday, Benedict!
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(My dad turns 85 tomorrow.)
That was supposed to be a heart:
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Happy Birthday and may you read many more books as god as CofD!
Thanks for the comment, Rod, and I'm already trying to imagine (in response to your latest post) what Melissa's and my "perfect Valentine's Day dinner" would be. In the meantime, here's a hat tip and some additional thoughts for you.
Remember Santa Battaglia's advice alongside the bottle of red squirreled away in the broiler on this day and "Night of Joy."
There is such a thing as a "family romance," which you can glimpse in Tolstoy's depiction of the Rostov family in War and Peace, for example.
My husband and I had kids so young and under such difficult circumstances, we never really had a "wheee" time. Never took a honey moon. Never really did much that was spontaneous or romantic. We figure that after the kids are grown (or mostly grown) we'll be in a better financial position to do such things anyways.
Here's the thing though. My husband has some serious health problems. He's been doing well for the last 5 or 6 years and he may well live to be an ornery old man. Of he may conk out by 45. That's just a reality that we live with. And given the choice between spending our younger years in domesticity but having time run out before we have a chance to get to "wheee" or getting the "wheee", but running the risk of him missing out on the domesticity, we'd choose to forgo the wheee stuff.
We started to realize what we had a couple of years into our marriage when it hit us that our little family was something completely new and we had made it. We both came from such screwed up backgrounds, and rather than carrying that forward, we left it behind and threw ourselves into figuring out how to make a family that worked. Back then, we were still struggling with working that out, but when we first started getting glimpses of what was looking more and more like success (ie a functional family) it hit us - we did this. We made this. No one in our family for many generations back had managed to do what we were in the process of doing. And really, that sense of accomplishing this minor miracle together was more romantic and bonding to us than any "wheee" moment ever could be. Heck, it was largely the motivating factor behind having two more kids!
Tonight, we're behind-on-the-rent broke, so there will be no fancy dinner. We'll probably roast some chicken and potatoes we got from the food shelf, bicker over cleaning the kitchen, make some brownies, tell the kids for the umpteenth time to quiet down, wrestle them all off to bed and snuggle in for the night together without candles or flowers or chocolates crossing the thresh hold of our home. But there are six people in our home and every one of them has a great, loving relationship with every other person in this house. And that's more than enough wheee for me :)
And really, that sense of accomplishing this minor miracle together was more romantic and bonding to us than any "wheee" moment ever could be.
Yes! Fantastic. Beautiful. The meaning of all that, they can't take that away from thee.
First of all: But there are six people in our home and every one of them has a great, loving relationship with every other person in this house. That is awesome. Yayyyy rebeccat! (And I saw the picture of your kids on your blog site, and they are so cuuuute. OMG, fainting from the cute!)
Secondly: here's what I don't get. I don't get people who think romance is, or should be, unnecessary. Romance isn't about stuff, though all the ads would like you to believe it is. Nor is it some made-up pretend thing. It's a deep reality in the heart of the world. Charles Williams used to say "That which is loved is, for the lover, an image of God." Having someone to love is the greatest gift the universe can provide. How could celebrating this gift ever be wrong? The anti-romance attitude strikes me as being like a parent who would throw a child a party and then say disapprovingly, "Fine, you've got your cake and presents, now stop getting all excited."
I can have a family and a responsible life AND I can let Mr. Sig know that he's my world . . . and what's wrong with that? I just looked around my bookshelves for a minute and my eye lit on about a dozen things I could read to him tonight that would bring tears of joy to his eyes. And if you don't have a lot of fairy tales and poetry books around, meet the joys of googling. I googled "love poems" and it took me all of five seconds to hit upon several things that made me go all mushy. I could take up yards of space with all the no-cost things I've done in the last 37 years to make daily life a little more special. It ain't rocket science, nor does it necessarily involve saran wrap. Although there are certainly many things that would make Mr. Sig's day, if not week, that involve no expenditure of funds nor equipment other than two bodies and one imagination. Of course, he's easy--if I made him a toasted cheese sandwich and put salami in it because I know he loves salami, his heart would swell with joy. ; ) If all else fails, I can take him out on the back porch at midnight, hold his hand, show him the sky, and tell him he's my brightest star. The sky is cheap, and usually visible.
Life is short. Pack all the love you can into it. There's a Paris of the heart where we could all be living today.
Well said, Sig! We may never, or never again, have Paris, but our most romantic destination is within, and always will be.
It's funny, but I bet Paris isn't "Paris" to most Parisians. I used to get a kick out of tourists to NYC, how dazzled they'd be by the city. They didn't have to live there, and put up with the bad stuff. Then again, they saw my city with fresh eyes, and I benefited from their perspective. It made me realize what an amazing place I was privileged to live in.
Just look at those beautiful Trotter children, would you!
Oh, you just had to do that, didn't you Rod? My keyboard won't make a big enough smiley face. . . . I hope I won't be out of place in saying that the apple doesn't fall from the tree--it's no wonder rebeccat has such beautiful children. Rebeccat, you just don't look old enough to have that many kids! ; D
What a lovely thread this is!
Rod, happy birthday! Hope you have a wonderful day.
Did anybody see the Google logo for today? It fits in rather well with this discussion, I think. :)
I agree with both Sig and Rebecca, which makes me suspect that today would be a good time to buy a lottery ticket. Our ideas of romance in youth tend to involve the crazy and spectacular, designed around keeping that romantic "high" artificially sustained. When we get older we start to realize that those emotions aren't necessarily love, and that love itself is a quieter but more persistent thing, something that pervades our whole dealings not only with our spouses but with our children, too.
Not that a little quiet romance, along the lines Sig draws, isn't a nice thing to have from time to time; but in our maturity we see it for what it is, a nice "extra" in the relationship, instead of mistaking those things for the lifeblood of the relationship as we're inclined to do when we're young.
I'm 43 and still madly in love with my husband. Parenthood, middle-age, and our mortgages have not dimmed the flame. We are still very hot for each other.
We've got the house to ourselves tonight and I CAN'T WAIT.
Happy Valentine's day everyone!
OK. I am trying to stay calm. Maybe I can learn something from this. But my inclination is to say to most of you (exception bd-rucker_you go!) NO NO NO NO NO. You are getting it wrong.
1. I love my kids. I love having a family. I loved seeing their cute little faces, and having dinner together, and all of that. And i feel all of those wonderful feelings so well described above. And obviously it precluded wild and crazy Valentine's Day days (not that we had that many--our family began just after our fifth valentine's day together). But "a little quite romance" is NOT just an extra. It is ROMANCE! It is ESSENTIAL!
I married my wife, not my children, and I LOVE her in a completely different way from how I love my children. Or my grandchildren. Since I seem to be older than most of you (50 was a nice memory, sometime ago, I forget when), let me tell you that when the kids are gone you better still get stars in your eyes when you see her or him. When our kids left I said "don't take this the wrong way, but being alone with you is what I wanted when we stared out, and I've been waiting a long time for this day." This may seem different from the whee! factor back in those early days of yesteryear, but it is only quantitatively, not qualitatively.
Love is the lifeblood of the relationship, and that blood needs to stay hot. Like rebeccat, we had no honeymoon (until our 30th anniversary), but when we did, it was not exactly like being 20 again except in our hearts. Every day, I am excited to come home and see HER. Again. It's bliss.
Nicely put, but I don't see that it's an either-or...
no, it's not either-or, but don't mistake, replace, or substitute the one for the other. That's all I'm sayin'.
You know, I don't see it as an either-or, myself, but I do think that there's a big difference between romance and love, and that it is love that endures when the sweeping romantic gestures of one's youth seem both grandiloquent and exhausting.
Romance is spending a huge chunk of money on jewelry for your wife; love is spending a huge chunk of money to pay off the car loan or the credit card. Romance is cooking a huge elaborate meal for your husband; love is letting him order the spicy wings once in a while, even if you're watching what he eats more diligently than he is. Romance is feeling your heart skip a beat when your beloved walks into the room; love is feeling your heart skip a beat when you wake up beside your beloved and can be completely oblivious to things like morning breath or lack of makeup or a bristly unshaved chin. Romance is telling your beloved over a bottle of good wine in an exclusive restaurant that all you want is to be together forever; love is making good on that promise when your beloved, and some of the children, are in the throes of a violent stomach flu.
None of that means that romance isn't important from time to time, though I honestly believe that some couples find overt romantic gestures more important than others do. But the danger in our times is that our culture tends to elevate romance above love, to the point that "we just weren't feeling it anymore" is considered a good enough reason to fracture a marriage and parcel out the children. All the romance in the world doesn't measure up to what love is: it is the the mutual request "Be with me," and the mutual response, "Yes, forever." You can't wrap something like that up in red ribbons, hide it in a box of chocolates, or jet off to Paris to find it: it's there through the times of romantic exultation and the times of earthy messy family life; and if it's there at all, it will grow to the point where there's more romance in a single but highly communicative glance at each other than there ever was in poetry and flowers and trinkets and song.
Erin's right. "Romance" is maybe the elevation of youth for its own sake, when any parent of young adults knows they can't find the door. (!!)
Real love ripens in years. The old wine is better.
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.
Me too, man, me too.
This morning I dropped off my youngest three at their parochial school (11, 7 and 6 -- the latter my only princess) and I waited and watched while they ran off to class, my little girl bouncing along in her plaid jumper, and my 7 year old son looking back twice to see if I was watching.
And I said out loud, "Thank you, Jesus." And I meant it. I meant it from the bottom of my overflowing 45 year old Daddy heart.
Thank you, Jesus.
de gustibus non disputandem. But isn't it better if your lover's heart still skips a beat when you walk into a room--mine still does (especially if there is no makeup--much the better, I say); I plan to occasionally cook exotic meals for her, as does she for me; I think it's vital to say "all I want is to be together forever"--even tho' I already know that we will be. Breaking into a church to get engaged (as we did) was not grandiloquent or exhausting--it was fun and romantic, and I would do it again in a heartbeat because that's the message I want to send, and a simple glance doesn't do it quite as loudly.
I agree that the *glamour* of romance seems to have overtaken any knowledge of true love in our modern pop culture, and this is a bad thing; but real Romance lives forever. "I'm going to live as like a Romantic as I can, even if there is no Romance". I'm just saying the poetry and song [and chocolate] belongs to love, enhances love, nurtures love, and helps it live long and flourish.
Happy Birthday, Rod.
(Now, here comes the "Bah, humbug.")
I'm glad you at least admit that what you call a "truly abundant life" can "seem depressing" to some. Even if I'm the only one on this combox so far who would agree.
I doubt I will have my own children, as I have noted here on several occasions; but given my demographic (two short years younger than you, Rod), it is entirely likely that if I remarry, I will have stepchildren -- so I am not averse to family life per se.
What I am averse to is the idea that kids "fulfill" you. That's as falsely romantic, I think, as the idea that a spouse "fulfills" you. If we are all children of G-d, we are our own "fulfillments" -- provided, of course, we live virtuously and morally.
(Of course, most religions don't see it that way ... sigh.)
The fulfilling nature of marriage (which I experienced, if ever so briefly, in mine) comes from two wholes trying to build a greater whole -- not two halves trying to form a whole, let alone two halves making babies to try to fill the holes in their own lives.
Favorite poet, Jack Ridl, wrote my favorite love poem titled LOVE POEM. The last line: "Never saying anything more lovely than garage door." Another favorite line: "I want midgets in my mouth." When my eldest son was a freshman in a Parochial high school his English teacher gave his class the assignment of finding a love poem and then writing an essay defending it as a great poem. He picked LOVE POEM. Not sure why that seemed important to add to the conversation but...
One of our favorite love poems is Wendell Berry's "The Mad Farmer's Love Song."
O when the world's at peace
and every man is free
then will I go down unto my love.
O and I may go down
several times before that.
Priorities!
Wow.
I don't know what to say, except that you have very articulately expressed what I think my friends with kids (most of them) have been trying to tell me for a long time. It's a pretty convincing argument for having a family!
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.
They're called Boomers, Rod.
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