Love That Grows with Time Carries a Much Sweeter Tune

February 13, 2000

The Boston Herald

I know that if I looked in the plastic storage box under the bed, I'd find Valentine's Day cards I sent to my husband when we were first married. I must have sent him valentines in the beginning.

I sent him all kinds of cards back then: "Missing you," "Thinking of you," "There's no one like you."

It didn't matter that his birthday was the day before Valentine's Day and that his birthday card and Valentine's Day card would say the same thing.

We said the same thing, over and over. "I love you." "I want you." "There's no one for me but you." We couldn't get enough of these words.

We danced to "More" at our wedding. "More than the greatest love the world has known, this is the love I give to you alone," certain that the words were meant only for us.

Later, after the honeymoon, when he traveled on business, which he often did, I copied love poems on little pieces of paper and tucked them into his shirt pockets. ("This is the true measure of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will ever love in the same way after us.")

He not only called from wherever he was, he sent "Missing you" cards too, and when one would end with a printed "With love," he would always draw an arrow between the two words and add "all my" above them.   

That's how love is in the beginning, intense and focused. But it changes. Oh, not the love ("Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds or bends with the remover to remove."), but the expression of it.

Older love isn't heart-shaped cards with florid sentiments or poetry read on winter nights or even "All my love" signed at the end of a page. It can be, but it isn't just these things.

It's having someone who's not only in your heart but also in your corner. Someone who keeps the light on until you get home, who helps you put away the groceries, who says, "All right. We can get a dog" even though he doesn't want a dog; someone who will never understand you but will never stop trying; someone whose heart breaks a little when yours breaks a lot.

Valentine's Day cards don't celebrate this kind of love. They're all whimsy and blue skies and dearest dreams and inspiration and beauty and rhyme. "I wish I could tell you, but no words can say, just how much it means, to have your love every day."

Even the best-known love songs are about young love: "I love you for sentimental reasons."  "I'll be loving you, always." "Time after time, I tell myself that I'm so lucky to be loving you." "When I fall in love, it will be forever."

My mother once made a record for my father. She sang "Mr. Wonderful" on an old 78 rpm and gave it to him for an anniversary.

"Why this feeling? Why this glow? Why the thrill when you say hello? It's strange and tender magic you do. Mr. Wonderful, that's you."

Last Christmas, my friend Jane Cronin Kelley made a CD for her husband, every song a message.  

"Long before I knew you, long before I met you, I was sure to find you someday, somehow. I pictured someone who'd walk and smile and talk like you do, who makes me feel as you do right now."

If I could sing, I'd  choose "Look Over There" from "La Cage Aux Folles" to give to my husband today. It isn't a conventional love song and it isn't a thing like our wedding song, "More." There's not even a mention of "the greatest love the world has known."

And yet, that's exactly what the song is about:

"How often is someone concerned with the tiniest thread of your life?

Concerned with whatever you feel and whatever you touch?

Look over there. Look over there.

Somebody cares that much.

How often does somebody sense that you need them without being told?

When you have a hurt in your heart you're too proud to disclose?

Look over there. Look over there.

Somebody always knows.

When your world spins too fast.

And your bubble has burst,

Someone puts himself last

So that you can come first.

So count all the loves who will love you from now to the end of your life.

And when you have added the loves who have loved you before.

Look over there. Look over there.

Somebody loves you more."