Love is more than romance

So we’re on the brink of another Valentine’s Day.

The lovers’ holiday strikes again, with boxes of candy and cards that play songs when you open them.

When I see these things in the check-out stand, I know what they are: the opening salvo of that magic we call romance. They’re tokens of those first moments when love is easy as a warm bath. Those first few months when you tend to put your keys in the refrigerator and attempt to open the car with the television remote.

Yup, it’s wonderful.

But just like a firecracker, there’s a big flash, a lot of heat – and then what?

That’s the problem – we’re so hyped on the romance, we’ve forgotten what comes next.

Loving someone. And that takes work.

I’m no expert on relationships – I have a divorce under my belt – but for most of my life I’ve watched my parents somehow make it work.

They’ve survived two kids, God knows how many cats and small dogs, one turtle, and an epic move from New York.

My parents had to live apart for a year, in order to make that move – my father in Seattle working for Boeing, and my mother in New York, trying to sell our house and being a single parent to my brother and I. It wasn’t easy, but they were committed to making a better life for us. Seattle gave them that chance.

When we finally arrived in Seattle, turtle in tow, my father took us to the Space Needle the first night. And as the city glittered like a blanket of stars below us, I fell asleep (sitting up) and pitched face-first into my plate of food.

No doubt ruining yet another poignant moment for my parents.

How my parents found any time for themselves is beyond me. Vacations were family events. Money was tight. They had two busy kids in need of taxi service. We had numerous pets, and the occasional flea infestation. And sometimes my parents just didn’t agree. But they always found a way to make it work.

My brother and I lived with the certainty we had two people in our corner, no matter what.

And when we kids finally moved out and got lives of our own, my parents moved into another house and filled it with even more little dogs. For the first several years I was living on my own, I don’t think I ever saw my mom’s feet, surrounded as she was by furry things with beady eyes. My dad put up with them, although I think he would have been happier if they were gold fish or something he could flush when they died. Instead there were tearful burials in the backyard.

Today my parents are living quietly, with two cats for company and a mob of squirrels hammering incessantly at the back door, because my mom feeds them.

My parents watch TV a lot, and they do it with dueling remotes. The upshot is the sound is always changing. Sometimes the channel, too. Nobody ever loses their temper – the sound and the channels just change back and forth. My dad usually wins because my mom cannot watch TV without falling asleep 20 minutes into things.

At other times, my mom abandons that territory for my dad, so that he can watch football, which she hates. She’ll make a beer run for him if he needs it. He, in turn, gives up computer time so that she can launch her eBay bidding wars.

In short, these are not moments of big-time romance. Nobody is declaring their love while dangling from a light fixture, or creating major drama at a restaurant. Rather than an epic romance, it’s more like a book of little chapters – going to a movie, cleaning the garage, painting a room.

And little chapters, I think, are what love is all about.

To all of those couples who are quietly making it work, without fanfare, best wishes for yet another year together.