You think you know love.
In warrior pose, on a yoga mat, on your twenty-first-floor, studio balcony, a cup of single-serve, K-pod coffee nearby, you watch Lake Michigan’s horizon issue another neon orange sunrise from between blue sky over water. Below, tiny people, seemingly all in pairs, bustle about. Wrigley Building’s huge, white clockface, overlooking Chicago river, reminds you of time’s passage. You feel hope…but wonder: “When will it be my turn?”
It’s not that you haven’t tried. You’ve descended, periodically, to search for “the one” who will follow you back to this airy lair as a triumphant male bee pursues his queen ever higher – without regard for victory’s outcome. Naturally, you don’t wish your unknown lover such violent disembodiment of self as awaits that bee upon permanently impregnating his queen. You simply want an operatic merger of perfect selves, “forever after.” Isn’t that what love pundits promise us in story and verse?
For you, your phantasmagoric lover is love. (If only that person could be found).
Street-level, staging is all wrong. Pubs, blaring music, stink of stale beer and disinfectant. You encounter attractive, but sharp-faced, young pleasure seekers disinterested in you save for how well you dove-tail with their relationship laundry lists. Where is your perfect “Romeo & Juliet” lover who will take you exactly as you are, including any deadly baggage? That, ironically, is your love-bond sine qua non. Meanwhile, time is wasted bouncing off others with bad chemistry…no receptor sites.
You endure seafood dinners to which you are allergic, market monologues ending with pressure to invest and endless, mindless chatter. Some seek instant gratification. Others can only offer friendship. Occasionally, casual couplings occur. Love? You hope. Then they end and you retreat, once again, to your high-rise dwelling to wait, for what seems like forever.
Finally, abruptly, everything falls into place. Someone — not your original romantic ideal — captures your attention, and you theirs. If interests aren’t indistinguishable, long-term goals occasionally diverge, well…you have a life to live.
The sex is passionate (thanks to all those asanas). That’s love, isn’t it?
Expectations are scaled back, compromises made. With traditional folderol you unite futures in a thirty-first-floor duplex, west of Chicago’s Lakefront but still overlooking Chicago River.
Occasionally, thru panoramic, but tightly sealed, floor-to-ceiling windows, sipping coffee brewed from freshly ground artisanal beans, you glimpse cars, boats and miniature people moving beneath this new residence – larger than your last but without a balcony. Never mind. None needed! Everything is within this cloudy nest – you, your love, a newly adopted, rather autocratic, Siamese cat and… eventually…children who will attend Chicago’s Near North Montessori, pre-school thru junior high. Like mated pigeons swooping downward to retrieve food bits later disgorged into open-mouthed squabs, you feed your young life.
And, for many years, life is good.
And, smiling, you think: “Aaa, now I know love” It’s not perfection; it’s continuing to care despite imperfections.
Years pass. Your son, a marine biologist, and daughter, who builds schools overseas, have grown up… and away. Time has claimed your partner’s youth and your own. Earlier miscalculations are catching up. Suppressed resentments over abandoned ideals and forced compromises seep through widening emotional cracks. To your immense surprise you find yourself disengaging from your chosen love. Or is it the other way around? Whichever, relationships within your sky-fortress crumble.
You descend, heavy-hearted, into Chicago’s Daley Center Divorce Division where disappointments are hurled across crowded courtrooms using “live” ammunition in the form of words spoken by serious-faced lawyers already late for proceedings in other courtrooms.
Your world implodes.
Back home, smog smudges formerly panoramic vistas, enveloping you in ceaseless gray. Surrounding high-rises merge with sky and river. Sleet pelts your panes. No matter. You rarely look outside. Nothing for you out there, now — if ever there was. Mental note to self: “Sell this airborne prison of broken dreams. It was another compromise.” You have always preferred balconies (and dogs).
I get it, you decide, cynical now. Love is an illusion in which, over time, dreams are systematically replaced with anger and disillusionment.
Time passes. A parent falls ill. Hospital bedside, you await their death. Friends (including your ex) offer vending-machine coffee, hugs and reassurances. Still, you are encased in spiritual darkness…contemplating your own dwindling mortality.
Sadly, you realize what love is: Loss. Angst. Scars. Pain. Yearning for times and relationships forever changed or gone. Memories.
Death concludes, and you return to your empty hole in the sky to wash away its antiseptic scent.
Now, you realize, you must decide: Are you… still in?
Amazingly, yes!!
You sort, discarding vestiges of former lives (an ancient Keurig, old soccer shoes, golf clubs, outgrown yoga pants). Tears give way…amazingly… to joy. Pared down, you embrace yourself and relocate to a two-bedroom, twentieth-floor, river-front condominium where you paint huge murals in primary colors, under a massive stone Buddha’s impassive gaze, grow herbs in container gardens and adopt a dog.
Day’s End: On your balcony, overlooking a stretch of Chicago River bordered by a tiny park, you relax in a turquoise Adirondack chair, sipping decaf amaretto-cream coffee. (No more caffeine for you. Doctor’s orders.) You lazily scratch your pup’s ears as purple streaks sunset’s vivid peach pallet and day yields to approaching nightfall. Skyscrapers silhouette themselves while millions of twinkling lights electrify a breathtaking emerging cityscape.
Motor boats full of raucous, young revelers, beer cans raised, hooting cheers, pass below, engines growling. Unexpectedly, your heart swells with love for them. You know them. Were them, once. Somehow, still are them. Just so, you are that vagrant sleeping, riverside, on a park bench, the United States President (whoever that may be), a spider nesting in your windowsill. All exist. You are them. They are you. All share in this intricate plan none of us fully envision or understand.
Your heart reaches out promiscuously.
What is love?
Is it knowing that, just as tonight’s sunset will be followed by tomorrow’s sunrise, you, as part of life’s circle, will endure. Is it recognizing yourself in each merrymaker, beggar, politician and insect? Is understanding that your ordinary life, lived in and around Downtown Chicago, may impact events over time and space as a butterfly’s wings beating in Brazil theoretically spark an avalanche in Tibet. Is it, simply, gratitude at having been privileged to participate in this magical journey?
Maybe…just maybe…all of the above are love.