For My Husband on Valentine’s Day

Unfortunately, the husband and I had to spend Valentine’s Day apart this year. Nevertheless, he still managed to spoil me from afar with chocolates and TWO bouquets. And knowing his Texas girl is a fanatic for her home state, he even managed to track down a Lone-Star Living bouquet:

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True to disorganized form, I wasn’t as good at getting a timely gift into his hands. But for my husband, I offer this Sara Groves song (one of my favorites):

Baby can you help me get undone
The party is over and their hearts were won
There’s a zipper in the back
But I can’t reach it on my own
And I am dying to get out of this so

Baby will you help me get undone

I don’t even remember how I got this on
I started out pretending
Now I don’t recognize myself
And I could use a little help

You have no pretenses
All your walls are fences I can see right through
You have no two faces
You know where our place is and that’s why I need you
Oh baby

Baby will you help me get undone
I don’t even remember how I got this on
I started out pretending
Now I don’t recognize myself
And I could use a little help

Cause I started out pretending
Now I don’t recognize myself
And I could use a little help
Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby
Will you help me get undone

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing….

Lately, I’ve been doing a fair bit of thinking about romantic love within story-telling. It’s been said that love makes the world go ’round. Nowhere is this truer than in the microcosm of fiction. Holding what may be a unique position in writing, romantic love is equally popular as a plot point and a story theme.

Of course, the way love manifests in these roles is incredibly varied. Love as a theme might be true love or love unrequited, love’s futility or love’s endurance. Love as a plot point might be the reunion of childhood sweethearts or the fracture of a mature marriage; jealous love turning a character to rage, or sustaining love uplifting a character from despair.

But at the center of these variations is the core concept of romantic love, at once divinely simple and inexpressibly complex.

My philosophical waxing on this subject is inspired by my current novel project.