Back before the internet, email or cell phones, when long distance calls were expensive, people stayed in touch through the mail. And those in love sent each other love letters. Some families treasure old love letters that were saved and tucked away only to resurface after a death. Unfortunately, my mother destroyed my father’s love letters to her, so I never got to read about the beginnings of their relationship. But I have words of love about my grandfather from my grandmother.

In general, I think, love letters went back and forth when couples were separated by distance. During the wars letters, heavily censored, kept couples connected. When I was in Oregon and the logger was in Alaska, we wrote letters. When I was in Massachusetts for a month, a romantic interest and I kept up a steady stream of letters. Most of those were about ideas, books and music, not what one typically imagines when thinking of “love letters.” But the “I miss you” and “I really miss you” can only fill so much paper!

I can’t imagine that people today are sending many love letters. Even our local card store has replaced its abundance of cards for a small corner offering. The rest of the place was turned over to gifts and clothing. And here postage has now gone to 55cents, a pretty strong disincentive to write when email is free.

Still there is nothing like the physicality of a hand written letter. There is the particular handwriting of the other. Sometimes there is even a little token enclosed, a sticker or a clipping, or a photo. I can’t imagine people hanging onto emails in the same way that we hung onto letters. And while I used to read and reread letters, I never do that with email and certainly not with texts, no matter how filled with kiss emojis.

We have all heard the expression “love is blind.” I never took much time to think about that sentence until the last couple of days. As I did so, I realized that love, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, is often blind.

Many new born babies look like Winston Churchill to the casual onlooker. Their little heads are often squished and sometimes pointed after their perilous journey down the birth canal. Here love blindness comes to the rescue. Every woman I have ever known thought that her new baby was the most beautiful creature ever. One look in those eyes and we were goners. We were surprised that everyone else wasn’t  similarly enamored. Amazingly enough, it turns out that this also rings true for grandchildren. No wonder we show off pictures of the new babies and drive around with bumper stickers proclaiming “Ask Me About My Grandchildren.”

But while blind love paves the way for intense parental connection, it can also be perilous in romantic situations. I was once engaged to a man I thought intellectually deep. I was blind to the truth until a good friend said point blank, “All still waters don’t run deep; sometimes still waters are just still waters.” Thank heavens she broke through my blinders and I called off the engagement.

Worse still is the blindness some people  have towards their addict partners or children. In this case, we call blindness “denial” and are baffled that they can’t see what is so obvious to the rest of us. In the name of love we can refuse to see the truth. True love in  this instance needs to be clear sighted, not blind.

And then there is the blind love that allows us to settle down with one partner, overlooking his or her faults. When we love like that we grant the other the grace to be real, warts and all. So it isn’t really blind after all. We just choose to focus on the good. And if we have chosen wisely we might wonder now and then why everyone doesn’t have a mate as “perfect” as ours.

I wrote that all sorts of influences tell us about love. One of the most pervasive, though misleading, themes running through songs in my teen years was the “bad boy.” Always misunderstood always alluring, the bad boy was held out as a desirable catch. In the song  “He’s a Rebel”, The Crystals told us that everyone said he would never be any good, but they knew better. Everyone being opposed to the romance heightened the excitement.

After reading a recommendation from beetleypete’s blog, I watched “The Third Man,” starring Orson Welles as the “bad boy.” Although a “good man” becomes available(Joseph Cotton) our female lead sticks with the ne’er do well. “I love him,” seems reason enough for her.

It makes for good pop songs and intriguing movies, but how helpful is the idea in real life? Sadly the love of a good woman doesn’t always change the “bad boy.” In fact, many of those fascinating teenagers turn out to be unreliable and undependable not so grown men. The plea that “I love him,” confuses close friends and seems a poor reason to tolerate appalling behavior no longer attractive in an adult.

So I am grateful that while I enjoyed watching James Dean lounge seductively around,  I was never fooled. I had seen the adult version in the fathers of a couple of my friends. They held no appeal. The life of the party, they were inattentive and unattractive husband material. I went for the “good guy” and I am glad I did. But when he puts on dark glasses and throws his jacket over his shoulder, there is just enough “bad boy” to keep things interesting.

A medley of love songs could serve as the soundtrack to accompany my life story. From the age of 9 when I bought my first Elvis Presley record(“All Shook Up”) through the Beatles with “She Loves You,” and on to today, music has captured my various encounters with romantic love. I am always astonished when a song comes on at the gym and I am suddenly catapulted back in time to a place and an emotion.

Sometimes songs remind me of wonderful times. Hearing “Moondance” by Van Morrison places me on a back road with a lumberjack boy friend driving to a farm for eggs and milk. Stevie Wonder’s song “Isn’t She Wonderful” played when my daughter, too, was a precious newborn. But sometimes songs capture heartbreak. Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” came on the car radio just as I was truly understanding that my first marriage was beyond repair.

Many couples seems to have a song they consider their own. At secular weddings these are often played or sung. My husband and I don’t have a song like that, but we did choose a favorite hymn for our ceremony. Lately we have laughed together over a Keb Mo song about a wife’s attempt to change her husband. His song is called “I Liked the Old Me Better.” Another song of his “Suitcase” also allows us a shared amusement about the baggage we each brought into the marriage. Less romantic than songs in our youth, songs that touch us today seem more down to earth. We certainly don’t connect with the recent “I’ll Love You ‘Til 70,” given that I am already past that age!

I would love to hear about songs that connect with you. I promise that I won’t call any of them “silly love songs.”

When we come into the world, we immediately become pupils in the school of love. Of course, no one calls it that, and we certainly don’t recognize that fact then if ever. But all of our experiences including family relationships, friends, romantic partners, religious settings, cultural influences such as books, movies and music, pets we acquire and objects we attach to combine to give each of us a working definition of love. Much of what we learn about love is mysterious. Shouldn’t love be easy? Why is sustaining love often difficult? What might it mean to really “love our neighbor” and “as ourself??” Why are there so many stories about love gone wrong? Why do we often take love for granted? Why do we still long for a happy ending? Why can the same love that heals also hurt? Why do we still love in the face of betrayal? Is there such a thing as unconditional love?  And I haven’t even begun to touch on erotic love. That topic will only occur on the edges of future posts though since this will remain G-rated and is not a tell-all,

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Our first lessons come to us as babies. And already we are learning much. Is our birth cause for joy or regret? We pick up clues from how we are held and talked to. Are we assigned a task such as with many babies of teen mothers to love rather than to be loved? We absorb a lot without knowing it, and it will show up throughout our lives for better or worse. But we are designed to seek love and our little faces grin expectantly.

Thinking about puppy love and school crushes led me to reflect on falling for men on the big screen. My two favorite were and remain Paul Newman and Denzel Washington. I fell for Paul in high school. I didn’t fall for Denzel until, as a single mother, I began to watch the television series “St. Elsewhere.” I never fantasized about singers while my friends screamed for Elvis and decorated their rooms with his posters. Even the Beatles failed to engage my interest, though, when pushed, I would say I liked John–the moody one–the best. My sister had a monumental crush on Paul(McCartney, not Newman!)But oh those men on those gigantic movie screens!(I quickly found Denzel in the movies. The TV Denzel was just too small to really captivate me.)

I was fond of joking that I would watch either man in an advertisement for rutabagas, so enamored I was by each. Paul lived in Connecticut between our house and New York City. Something about his actual proximity to me in Connecticut fed my secret life. When I would drive through Westport on my way to the City, I would always give him a shout out. Even now that he is gone I toot and say hello to his memory as I drive by.

In 1959, my parents went to Hawaii on a Matson Line ship courtesy of the company since my father did legal work for them. The highlight of the trip for my mother was not the beach, not the sun, not the exotic volcano. She was beyond excited by spotting William Holden(her screen love) on the beach at Waikiki. She didn’t need to talk to him; it was enough to be actually sharing the same stretch of sand.

I have no idea if young girls still fall for movie stars. I have no idea of boys of my generation fell for movie stars. All I know for sure is that when either Paul or Denzel leaned in for a kiss, it was me he was aiming for!

In 1960, when I was in eighth grade, Paul Anka made a hit with his tune “Puppy Love.” It was in the long tradition of young love discounted by adults. Since I was part of the huge baby boom coming into our teen years, misunderstood by our parents, it was a very popular song. Puppy love seems a pretty good put down to dismiss the feelings that first seem to pop up in early adolescence. Perhaps the name allows the parent to stave off for a while the realization that their child is growing up and will make her own romantic choices

My granddaughter found the diary I kept in fifth grade. I make constant references to “James” a boy in my class. I note if he is in class, if he is absent, if he notices me or not. Then I relate the painful moment when “Janice” tells “James” that I like him. This, of course, violates all the rules, and I get back at her by telling “Andy” that “Janice” likes him. My grandchildren think it hilarious that I had a crush on a boy and promptly looked him up in my class yearbook. They laughed even harder when they saw what “James” looked like. They didn’t find him cute.

But I think I was onto something in fifth grade. Amazingly enough, one night I was at a bar and noticed an attractive man across the room. We met up and unbelievably enough, it was “James!” No more came of it then than in fifth grade, but my tastes seemed not to have changed much.

Here’s to those first crushes, those puppy loves, that time when we begin to think that maybe romance isn’t “totally gross.” It’s the time in our lives we stop having to close our eyes when two people kiss in the movies!

I have had a great time throughout January writing about fun and games. I have learned a lot about how much in common I have in other bloggers around the world. I have pondered how it is that a game with five stones can be played in India and England and how around the globe people toss sticks and rocks. Since February features Valentine’s Day in its middle, I thought I would write about love in all its many manifestations. I am starting off with a snapshot of a sampler I made 35 years ago, before I was married to my present husband. It hangs over our bed, a constant reminder of the many delights and challenges that love brings.

I look forward to exploring love in its many dimensions throughout the month. I will also enjoy comments that arise from my contemplations. Love to you all.

I went to many birthday parties when I was a child. They were all held in the birthday child’s home, and they all followed the same format. The party started out with games, followed by the birthday girl(I only went to girls’ parties) opening her presents, followed by ice cream and cake. The cake always had the number of candles to represent the birthday and was brought lit to the table for the girl to make a wish and blow out the candles. No one hired clowns or magicians. No one had her party at another location such as a pizza parlor(there weren’t any) or an arcade(there weren’t any). Parties were, therefore, pretty affordable and noncompetitive.

Every party had a variety of pin the tail on the donkey, sometimes nose on the clown, sometimes bow on the hair. Each child was blindfolded, turned around three times, handed a tail(or a nose or a bow) and directed to stick in on the donkey(or clown or hair.) The child who taped it closest to its appropriate place won a small prize. Much merriment surrounded the dizzy child failing to even attach the tail anywhere near the target. Usually there were two other games of the mother’s choosing. Each game had one prize, so three children left the party with a prize.

Contemporary children’s birthday parties are big business. Our local grocery store features a free booklet with party locations, party entertainment and party food. Each child is supposed to leave the party with a “goody bag,” ensuring, I guess, that no child feels slighted. On the other hand, no child gets to win one of three prizes, something I always tried to do.

Fortunately, my daughter has held old fashioned birthday parties in the back yard with games such as running around and blowing bubbles. At one birthday party ten various aged kids spent their time digging a giant hole and leaping over and into it. Once again, it proves that kids make their own entertainment when given the chance. They still devour cake and ice cream! Some things never change.

A pizza restaurant near us hands each child a menu illustrated with several games and a small pack of crayons when we are seated. While the menus vary over time, “tic tac toe” always appears. It’s a simple game of each player alternating placing an x or an o in one of the nine open squares. The first player to get three in a row wins. One thing I have never done is preplan any strategy. This makes me an easy mark for my grandchildren who have figured out who needs to go first and what mark to make to win nearly every time. Their glee delights me.

Another favorite pencil game, “Hangman” is still just as enjoyable as it was years ago when I played it on rainy days at school. The first player thinks of a word and draws an appropriate number of blank spaces to accommodate it. The other player guesses which letters appear in the word. If she is right, the space is filled in(see above for letters “a” and “n.”) If wrong, a piece of the hanging man is added to the noose. Ideally the word is guessed before the complete “hanged man” dangles from the rope. Clearly the more minimal the man, the fewer turns are available before losing out to the rope. When I played my granddaughter at a younger age, I had a very elaborate stick figure with eyes, ears and toes to allow her enough chances to win. Now we stick to just head, arms and legs.

I am always glad for the restaurants which give us some fun things to do while waiting for our food. These word hunts, mazes and tic tac toe games make the arrival of the meals almost secondary. And no one is likely to look at her phone.