What Do You Get When You Fall in Love?

My Funny Valentine: I know there have been more rants than kisses here. If ever there were a time to change that, today is the day. I want to see if I can still write Ms. M a love letter. Here goes…

Imagine a time when I am nine years old. It’s Sunday night, and I’m sitting in the dark in the back of a 1955 Ford station wagon. My dad is driving. My mom sits next to him. We’re coming home from another weekend at the Farm.

It’s a time before interstate highways. Lonesome two-lane roads are the only way to get there. The journey home is mapped by small Ohio towns, like Sugar Grove and Circleville and Washington Court House.

It’s a time before Hate Talk Radio. WLW out of Cincinnati plays the latest pop songs, wedged grudgingly between ads and baseball scores. Songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Singers like Dione Warwick and Dusty Springfield. What Does It Mean to Fall in Love? The Look of Love. I Say a Little Prayer.

I sit in the back seat and listen. I’m glad it’s dark. I’d be embarrassed if anyone could see the dreamy look on my face. This is when I begin to notice that quickening of the heart called love.

It happens as soon as you wake up. It happens while you run to the bus stop. It happens on your coffee break when you should be back at work. Kiss someone and you get enough germs to catch pneumonia. Mmmm… no more worrying about cooties.

I know you don’t believe me when I say stuff like this, but that is when I began to fall in love with you.

Something else is happening in the front seat of the car. My mom and dad listen to the same songs while they talk in a low murmur. My mom relives the hurts and insecurities of another weekend with her mother. My dad listens to her as he drives.

This is my first experience of an awesome, archetypal mother-daughter drama that I would witness at times throughout my life. Bearing witness — maybe this is what it means to be present at creation.

My mother talks and my father listens. He speaks sometimes, too, enough to let her know he is listening. He is present for her. He is present like the Rock of Gibraltar is present for the storms that wash over it.

Another song comes on the radio. Alfie. He forgets the movie but knows the music. He plays it by ear whenever he sits down at a keyboard. What’s it all about, Alfie? He doesn’t have an answer other than hanging on to the question. This, too, is how I begin to feel what love is when I am nine years old.

So, my Valentine, I send you both kinds of love today. The romances of Dione and Dusty, of course. And the deeper, subsonic forms. The ones that hold us together, like waves collapsing on the shore, and the rocks that receive and release them.

About the Image: Burt Bacharach and Angie Dickinson share a paparazzi moment at a Hollywood nightclub circa 1966, when they fell in love. Bacharach was the composer of 1960s pop hits like “Say A Little Prayer” and “The Look of Love.” Dickinson was a movie actress with legs famously insured for a million dollars.