On love
I’m 91 years old and, looking back over a not very remarkable life, I can say I have been in love at least once. I was of marriageable age, but my lady was 4 years younger than I and I foolishly thought that was too young. Her sister, whom I didn’t love, was only two years younger than I, so I married her sister. A redeeming factor for this mismatch was that our only child was a daughter who was and is the light of my life. She is now the very pretty mother of 2 men in their forties and the very pretty grandmother of three fine boys. I thought her the prettiest, smartest and everything else-est little girl on this earth. And I may not have been far off, for when she was 2 we entered her in a pretty baby contest involving the tri-cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco, Washington, and she tied for first place. Because of her I can’t complain of my marriage, though, because disappointed with my marriage, I never married again.
But about love: every couple who are in love with each other secretly feel their mental and/or emotional selves have welded themselves into one emotional and/or intellectual being (as the reader sees fit about this — I feel “emotional covers the entire mental/emotional concept. To my mind, thought is feelings (See Susanne K. Langer’s three-volume “Mind: an Essay on Human Feeling”). If questioned closely, a couple may allow the transfusion of the one into the other has been not complete, but still extensive. Left alone, however, they still feel they have been made one, not thinking too deeply about it, though a few months of living together will leave them ready to concede to a great many differences, in spite of which they subconsciously and paradoxically assume a fusion of souls.
There’s a tragic constriction here, for no two people can have the same experiences, and experiences make the personality, peculiarities and preferences of every sensible creature. It’s impossible, therefore, for any two people to be much more than similar; a fact that constitutes an indispensable but attainable segregate in the elements of love.
Dean Sparks, Lucerne
