In an old movie, two people are very much in love but can’t bring themselves to do anything about it because they are middle aged, shy, proper, and afraid. Instead they row out onto a lake, utterly alone. They talk and until one of them says, “If I turn around and never look, would you undress to your underthings?” The back is turned, while the other removes every article of outer clothing. They sit for a few minutes before the one in almost nothing puts everything back on and says, “I’m ready.” That is the end of the scene. That is love.
This is not how most romantic scenes are written. We know the tropes, the expectations, the fantasies. But love is as varied and as quirky and as individual as the number of creatures that have ever existed on this planet. We writers know that strangeness is the quality that brings us to our own writing and what brings readers to identify with characters. Love is infinitely more interesting in its oddities, its clumsiness, its suddenness, and its rarified gentleness. Romantic love can be a tango or a stumble out to the trash bin. Why follow a formula? Why not let love transect all the assumptions and all the patterns?
There was the day when I was flattened by life, asleep in a waiting room chair. I woke for a drowsy moment to see a woman dressed in a custodial uniform bending over me and carefully extracting the candy wrapper that had dropped onto my lap. As I looked up at her, she put her finger to her lips, smiled slightly and moved away to continue her job. That too is a generous, gentle love.
When my father was diagnosed with malignant melanoma at forty-five, he left the oncologist’s office and headed to the car where my mother waited for him. She knew the news was going to be bad. “What did he say?” my mother asked. My father answered, “He told me that we have to have as much sex as possible.” They laughed their heads off, because that’s the kind of love they needed to face the moment.
Love is fierce and weird and just exactly what it is: an attempt to let someone else in. We writers can tune our binoculars, our listening devices, our antennae to recognize it and translate it into poetry, flash fiction, novels, and memoirs. Writing about love means falling in love with love in all its splendor and foolery. Write about that.
Publications
Maud & Addie “Sure to enchant, Maud & Addie is a touching novel complete with old skeletons, new friends, and the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood.” Vivian Turnbull, Foreword Reviews. To purchase: https://regalhousepublishing.com/product/maud-and-addie/
blessed are the menial chores “Should anyone ask what poetry is, hand them a copy of this book.” Sue Brannan Walker, poet laureate of Alabama 2003 – 2012. Purchase here: https://www.writingfulltilt.com/author/
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