Winter Love

Finding love in winter?? I don’t want to go there; don’t make me. Well, all right, if you really want to talk about it. But what’s the point?

Yes, it’s true. I have known for some time now that it is necessary to find a life partner. I am not getting any younger, I know I am growing weaker, and two are stronger than one.

Did I expect that finding that partner would bring joy in my life? I don’t need joy. I am at peace, content with my purpose in life and my efforts to realize to its fullest that purpose. I have found equilibrium, far more satisfying than joy.

Until, that is, I found my partner. Did I expect him to be Superman? Quite simply, I had no expectations. Surely he needed to be a traveler and on a spiritual path. Beyond that, the trivial things I asked for (a musician, no taller than 5’9”, to name two) were nonessential frills.

He has a noble name, although his parents ignobly denied him its full breadth, Gregory. They chose instead ‘Gregg’. And so the tone was set for his life. A luminous essence traversing a wobbly orbit, compass set to a noble course, on torturous tacks towards it. .

Surely finding each other was a joyous event. The joy was short lived, like a magnesium flash measured against the time span of eternity. Now comes the hard part. Two creaky cranky people learning how to appreciate, love and respect a space invader.

Too soon to move in together, our time is spent invading the others home for short spans, trying hard to adjust to an environment not conducive to our habits. I like my oatmeal every morning; he takes breakfast casually. I need my face cream, hair brush, morning toilet rituals not available at his cramped abode. At my abode, he wakes up wanting his own shower, not mine. He sits looking lost, finger crooked for a phantom cup of coffee, while I buzz around in my morning rituals.

And the physical! Oh don’t get me started. My atrophied body was not ready for the brutal assault of sexual awakenings. I had forgotten how messy sex is. In the habit of celibacy, desires long ago extinguished, how am I supposed to suddenly feel aroused? I remember the hot flames of desire, but weren’t they fueled by hormones now dissipated from my frame? I respect this man, I enjoy his company, I find him gentle and easy to be with, I lean on him happily. I would not want him to leave my life ever again. To return to my familiar single life would be a journey down to spiritual and emotional impoverishment where once there had been contentment. But he is still a man, hormones still course through his body, and he expects to be sexually desired and completed.

Winter love, then, is a fascinating phenomenon. It is something new, altogether not expected, not predicted by media hype. They don’t try to sell products to us, so they project us no image to help us find our way. Not a love ruled by hormones, it is the discovery of a new way of caring. With the heart, with the mind, especially with the spirit, it is a reaching out, an opening up, an expanding of Self to accommodate Other who walks into your arms a stranger.

Just at that moment in life when we old people are reputed to be fixed in our ways, unchangeable, old dogs incapable of new tricks.

All right then, now you’ve heard. The good, the bad and the ugly. On to a brave new adventure, probably the most significant of a lifetime. Certainly the toughest. One can only hope the rewards will be equal to the challenge.