Links of Love

This is not a post about sausage. Although, I guess it could be.
I've been digging around in people's love lives for the last several weeks and have made some interesting discoveries. I was talking to my love and doing that thinking out loud thing that I do and I was telling him that there are about five topics about which I find it difficult to write without resorting to cliche or maudlin, sappy nonsense.

"Really? What are those?" he asked.
I ticked them off: "Love, death, parenting, coming of age, faith."
"I don't believe you," he said. "Have you ever read a story that wasn't, in some way, about one of those things?"

He's right, of course. He and his orderly, lawyerly brain are good at pinpointing things for me that I've muddled all around into a panic. He challenges me and believes in me and so when I told him about my baby idea - my little wobbly, new fawn - he said "Write it."

So, you can blame him for my muddling about in your affairs.

I've been collecting love stories and here are some that you've offered up:

Larissa at Papa is a Preacher "Because I promised myself to not shy away from writing of things I'm scared to write about... Because I want to. Deep in my gut I want to. But I will admit, I don't know how."


Michelle at Buttered Toast Rocks "It's the story of two kids who felt older than their years, who came together like perfect connecting puzzle pieces, who knew that to say yes to this big adventure was a forever kind of deal."


Sleepy Joe at The Life and Writings of Sleepy Joe "Meeting my other half was not the happiest time of my life. I was 8, my father was ill and we had just moved to a bungalow because of his mobility issues..."


Tara at Faith In Ambiguity "My mind settles on the second boyfriend, the one who ended up with a part of my soul in his back pocket forever."


Masked Mom at Masked Mom "How could I have thought, even for a moment, even under the duress of there's nothing to be done about it in any case, that our renewed contact resolved things in any permanent way?" [I might add that this is only a teaser of a post that is yet to come, so stay tuned.]


Word Nerd at Word Nerd Speaks "Then there was the guy that all of my friends thought I would marry. Thought I should marry. The first serious guy. He was nice looking, stable, educated, and came from a good bit of money. If I was a checklist sort of girl, he’d have scored very well. The thing was, I didn’t love him."


The M-Half of the M-n-J Show  "Knowing it could never last, but that maybe it would if we worked hard enough. If we paid enough attention, if we learned the right words, took the right classes, and tried hard enough, maybe it would last."


Lucy at The Trans-Gentle Wife writes a whole blog about her love story and the twists and turns it has taken. "We tried on ruby rings surrounded by diamonds. Something not traditional. Something with deep quality that is impossible to break. Something still simple. Something perfect."


Jane in Her Infinite Wisdom writes of a first love found: " It was the next weekend Andy and I would...I don't even know what. Talk late into the night and remember only later that other people were in the room with us...but only as a memory...an intellectual exercise." And then lost and lost again: "And then? Then I got mad. Madder than maybe I've ever been with him. I wanted to yell and scream at him...maybe even kick his shins for being such a damn dunce! And also for being dead. I can't seem to forgive him for that."


There are more. Infinitely more. If you peruse your favorite blogs, you'll find love stories of every description. If you look around, you'll see them: in your own life, walking down the street, in your families, in your neighborhoods, churches, workplaces, underpasses, back pockets, everywhere. Love manifests itself, is the basic fabric of our lives, will not be contained by the heart-shaped boxes in which our culture tries to place it. 


Everyone has a love story to tell. Thank you for sharing yours with me.