Valentine's Day

bSipping coffee I watch a pure unobstructed sunrise bubble up from the ocean. Bill Berry (not the former drummer from R.E.M. but the other one who went to Seminary and around the world with me) is sitting beside me. We are on the eighth floor balcony of a Myrtle Beach hotel. Neither of us speaks as we watch. The birth of a day is a holy thing.

When we do talk, I falter. Emotions seem to be getting the best of me. I go back inside and look for distractions. Turning on my computer I find my favorite radio station in St. Martin in an attempt to flee to another life in a happier place.

Beneath the tide, the fishes glide, fin to fin and side by side.
For fishy love has now begun, fishy love, finny fun.

James Taylor fills my brain with his quirky ode to this day. It is a song full of images. “Paper moon, paper heart, pink balloon, work of art, Al Calpone, Bugs Moran, Valentine’s Day …”

The sunshine now fills the room. Bill has retreated so that I can reel myself in. The song will not leave my head.

“Land your punch, I stand my ground. We break for lunch and have a second round.
We set them up, we knock them down. Valentine’s Day.”

Love is the most powerful and overwhelming of emotions. When it bursts into your life it is all consuming. When making love with the one you love the entire universe is reduced to skin and breath and hair. I suck it inside of myself and it fills my soul. Lightning strikes and the sun rises at the same time! Your senses are completely filled with love.

Then it has this way of settling. And love becomes subtle. Food rubs and lotion, chicken noodle soup, bread, or getting a blanket for the person you love become powerful though simple expressions of what you feel and who you are.

“Oh day to repay the one that you love, Gentlemen take off your hats as I speak thereof.
Just a brief break from the push and shove, we may go a few rounds without boxing gloves.”

Then love can be reduced to token expressions because they are expected. Flowers are bought, dinner reservations made, cards are exchanged and pecks are given to cheeks with quick wishes of “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

And you find yourself pondering what happened to the love? It is reduced to a routine only interrupted when … it is challenged.

By another. By the threat of a partner who no longer wants you. By demands of something more.

“Me and you, you and him, him and her, us and them, we keep score, love as war. Valentine’s Day.”

I think these things as I stare off of this eighth floor balcony at the vastness of the ocean and the brilliance of the sun. I have a lot of love inside of me that I don’t know what to do with. It is as vast as the ocean and as bright as the sun. It is ready to explode out of me but remains captive by … circumstances.

Bill returns to make more coffee. He asks what I’m writing and I try to explain it to him. He just stares at me for a bit as though processing what I’m saying. He has this way of listening where you feel you have every fiber of his being focused on you.

He walks to where I’m sitting and hugs me.

At least you’re with somebody that loves you.

“Yep,” I nod as the emptiness returns.