Pondering

Today's high temperature was:  52 degrees

Cloudy all day

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All day and tonight, I am worried and praying for my friends in the tornadoes paths.

Charlotte and Margie, in Arkansas and Ernestine in Tennessee.  Also Vickie in Oklahoma.  Hope you and your family/friends were spared from the vicious storms!!! 
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Thanks for the advice concerning Pearl.  I still don't quite know what to do when she asks me a question about something she doesn't remember and I give her the answer and then she argues with me.  Perhaps I could say, "What do you think?"  or "Could it be.....?"  I believe she knows that something is wrong with her mind and it frightens her.  So if I try to help by filling in the blanks--that just reinforces her problem and makes her more upset.  So--I will be much more careful.  As I've said, I have not had this experience with anyone, so...I am learning.

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I have spent a good part of this gloomy outside, staying inside day, thinking back and pondering.  Back to the mid-50's.  I was married in 1957 and divorced in 1984.

I'll bet over those 27 years, my husband and I said "I love you" to each other--perhaps a dozen times.  I guess, people nowadays would find that strange.  The phrase is bandied about without much thought.

We were much the same as our parents had been.   I don't ever remember hearing my Dad and Mother say THOSE words to each other.  It was a deeply private thing.  I knew my Dad loved my mother--it was very apparent when she was dying and he sat by her bed for 36 hours and never moved.  His head placed near her pillow--they stared into each other's eyes and whispered words back and forth to each other.  That scene was so filled with love that it almost embarrassed me to watch.  I felt very much the intruder and spent most of the time sitting in the Solarium.

I can remember distinctly the first time I heard it.  Gary was a Senior and I was a Junior--we had been going together for over a year.  We were sitting in the driveway, out in his car.  We weren't talking, we were just hugging and he put his mouth hear my hair and said, "I love you, Judy."  I didn't say it back to him, I remember now.  That would come later.  Although I did love him, had loved him, but, girls just didn't say it first.  My heart jumped into my throat!  I felt so warm and happy.

In that "I love you" was contained a lot more than just the words.  It meant, I was his girl--forever.  It meant we would never date anyone else.  It meant that we would get married--someday.  It meant we would be together for the rest of our lives.  It was--back then--a very serious statement and I remember how it made me feel.

I would be cared for--taken care of--never have a worry.  He had made a huge commitment.  This man of few emotions and words.  It meant he would work the rest of his days to put a roof over our heads.  To be the boss of the family.  It meant he was taking on a lot of responsibility.  There was no sexual connotation in those words.  We were together three years and still both virgins.  Many of my friends were virgins on their wedding days and had been with their boyfriends for 3-4 years.

A  year later, he was home from the Army, I was a senior, almost out of school and we had sex--once. It was his idea, of course and we both vowed it wouldn't happen again until we were married.  Then I found out I was pregnant, there was never even a thought that he would bail out.  We were going to be married anyway, so we just would get married now.  I did give him the option though, but I knew when I did it, that he wouldn't discard me.  Strangely, we didn't have sex until our wedding night.

On our wedding night, we said it to each other.  There were other words that meant the same thing, showed great love, but never those 3 particular words.  There was no need for them.

If I kept the house clean and made a nice supper for him--that meant I love you.  If he saved enough out of his merger pay check to take us to the Dairy Queen to get a banana split to share--that meant he loved me.  When we had the opportunity to build a small home and he asked me if it was what I wanted and I answered, "Yes."  He went about getting a loan and working with the contractor to build it--that said, I love you.  When he asked if I would help him drill the well (by hand) and I was 7 months pregnant and I helped him--that said, I loved him.

I remember, when my Mother died. I didn't cry for the first couple of days, but one evening, he was home with the kids and I was driving back from my Dad's house up the road, and I totally lost it.  I pulled into the driveway and started screaming and crying and pounding the steering wheel.  He must have heard me because he came out, opened the door of the car, pulled me out and into his arms.  He was kind of an Agnostic back then, but he said, "If there is a Heaven.  I know your Mother is there right now!!"  Obviously those words meant the world to me, if I still remember them, these 44 years later.

Within the "I love you" words was the "assumption" that if he was still coming home each night from work--if I was still there with supper on the table--it meant we loved each other.  Actions spoke louder than any words.

That's why--I guess--in the last years of our marriage, when he started doing his own thing and I started taking over a more of "his" chores, to me that meant, he didn't love me anymore.  What is really weird, the day we went to court to make our divorce final--we sat together, on a bench out in the hallway, and hung on to each other's hands and cried and cried.  We still loved each other, but didn't know how to fix the marriage.

I know, even now, I still love him--that deep feeling inside for him.  I don't particularly "like" him, but I still love him.

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I've said "I love you" to a lot of men since and heard it from a few.  Those words however, didn't really carry the depth of commitment they did back in the day.  It was more of a "I love you now--at this moment."

Fred was the first man, after my divorce, that I really connected with on that deep level.  He said he felt the same way about me.  It seemed like THIS love was more of an equal commitment.  We took care of each other.  It wasn't up to him to care for me financially.  We were a real team.  When one couldn't pull equal weight, the other one, picked up the slack.  

The words however, were spoken every day--several times a day.  Once I remember thinking, the words had lost that deep meaning--that they were said in passing or something.  "I'm running up to Wal-Mart.  Love you, Honey.  See you in a bit."  

I guess the deepest meaning of those words was before operations or when we were scared, or the moments before he died?  In those times, we clung to each other and the words meant--forever and "I would be devastated if anything bad happened to you."

I had that same deep connection to my best friend.  We didn't say the words to each other when we were younger, but in our later years--we said them every time we saw each other.  We knew what they meant--a deep connection that would be for eternity--forever.

I say the words a lot now.  "Love's ya"--thrown out to friends.  "I love you, Sweetheart"-said to my kids and grandchildren. Sure, I mean it, but.  I notice my sister and I do not say those words to each other very often.  I wonder why.  Probably because, in our family, they weren't said much?  Or because they aren't needed because we know that we know that we know--there is that deep sense of commitment to each other--that we would die for each other if need be.  I think I will start saying those words to her--whenever I leave her house or she leaves mine.  At this stage of my life--those just might be my last words to her--we never know.

I guess, in the long run, I wish those words actually were said less and meant more?  Like back in the old days.