I heart love <3

I have a secret. Don’t tell anyone: I really believe in true love (aka 'to blave'). I believe, like a twelve year old girl, in The Last of the Mohicans kind of love that yells across a chasm “I will find you, no matter how long, now matter how far...I will find you.” I believe in the Princess Bride kind of love where true love speaks the dialogue of Wesley and Buttercup:

W: I told you I would always come for you. Why didn't you wait for me?

B: Well, you were dead

W: But death cannot stop true love...All it can do is delay it for a while.”

I believe in the Moulin Rouge! kind of love that sings to me, despite my worst flaws, “I will love you, until the end of time.”

Somebody please slap me...right? After all, I’m a forty year old woman. I should know better. Funny thing is, I’m not really alone in my love of love...have you seen the lines queuing up outside of New Moon? They’re just hoping to get a glancing brush up against that kind of love.

I always believed my parents had that kind of love. A love that turns a blind eye to the everyday pettiness of boorish behavior and failed expectations. A love that stands in the face of vicissitudes of nine kids, war and the death of a child. A love that would transcend death. I guess that’s why I kind of fell apart when my mom died and my father found comfort in the companionship of other women within two months of her death. This did not fit into my ideal of love. No matter how many people tried to explain, in logical, statistical, sociological terms, how this was a common occurrence among men who had enjoyed a healthy marriage, I just couldn’t hear it. My parents were different. They had the kind of love that comes along once in a lifetime. The kind of love I believe in.

I still couldn’t get used to it even eight months after her death. By then, he had already dated three different women. You’d think I would have pulled on my big girl pants and gotten over it. At the time, I went to the play Mama Mia! and my heart crumbled when Donna, played by Louise Pitre sang the song “The Winner Takes It All”. First of all, Ms. Pitre has this beautiful, deep, rich voice that reminded me of my mom’s singing voice. Earlier in the show, the writers had already set me up with the mother/daughter ballad of time lost, “Slipping Through My Fingers”, causing me to imprint on Donna as mother figure. So when they clobbered me with left hook of, “Tell me does she kiss you like I used to kiss you.” I couldn’t help feeling wounded for my mother. I imagined her asking that of my father. I couldn’t fathom how a love of such great consequence could have been so easily replaced. The loss of love had me weeping in the loge, grateful that it was dark in the theater.

I’ve had years to come to grips with my childish expectations of my parents and have done just that. But lately I’ve been having a few flashbacks. My friend has recently experienced the loss of the last bit of hope that she had for her marriage. Like me, she believes in love. She hoped, against all hope, that somehow the fairy tale would turn back on itself and erase years of hurt, misunderstanding, neglect and waning affection. Many people, when trying to speak encouraging words into her situation, assure her that “This is for the best. Now you can move on. You were suffering for so long.” In the face of such encouragement how does one articulate profound and unshakeable sadness? “If this is such a good thing then why do I keep crying?” Why do lines like " building me a home, thinking I'd be strong there", "somewhere deep inside you must know I miss you." and "I don't want to talk— because it makes me feel sad" pierce right through the fragile veneer of control into the ache? Because the loss of hope for true love is just. so. sad.

I have another secret. This is for anyone who has lost that last bit of hope in true love: It does exist. I have found it. With no disrespect to the wonderful marriage of eighteen years I’ve enjoyed or the four outrageous gifts of children I’ve had the privilege of nurturing, this love is bigger than all those relationships... combined. This spiritual relationship never fails when everyone else does. Even when I die, this love will not falter. It never disappoints and is not disappointed in me. In fact, the place inside of me that recognized this love in The Last of the Mohicans, the Princess Bride and Moulin Rouge!, is exactly the size and shape of the relationship that filled it.

In the book, Night of Grace, I explore the realization of this love when a mysterious stranger declares himself to young Grace, a woman who has come to her last shred of hope and has left it lying face down on the beach at the tideline. The stranger comes and plucks that last shred up from the place where sand meets sea. A third of the way into the book, he makes his declaration:

"Grace I am wildly, deeply, madly in love with you. I have walked across a sea of stars to reach you, changed my form so you could comprehend me, accepted death on your behalf and stormed through hell and back again just so we could be together. You are beautiful to me. You are the love of my life. I could spend an eternity with you.”

They say that a writer’s first book is generally a thinly veiled autobiography. I would contend that any character in play, book, song or movie that we identify with can be twisted into autobiography. We rewrite our own circumstances onto those villains, heroines, lovers, saviors that we encounter along the way. So, in the same way I have found the echoes of the love I longed for in Buttercup and Wesley, Hawthorne and Cora and Satine and Christian, maybe another reader will find a secret treasure of recognition in the relationship between Grace and her Mysterious Stranger. I can only hope. Good luck storming the castle. It'll take a miracle.