Reading Romance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

The usual saying goes a little differently: “Distance makes the heart grow fonder” or its opposing sentiment, “Familiarity breeds contempt” but writers are always on the lookout for a different way of seeing the everyday.

To make our work fresh and unique, we scour our brains for ways of saying what ultimately is the same truth — the truth that has been told by our predecessors from the first instance that one human spoke to another member of the cave-dwelling group about an experience they would all need to understand to survive.

In tales of romance, the element of survival may not seem quite as drastic as how to wrangle with a saber-tooth tiger or avoid eating those poisonous berries that look so delicious. But the human heart — technically a mere symbol of the miasma of emotions we cope with every day — can cause the most dire of consequences to arise from what some consider trivial events.

Falling in love, for many of us, is one of the moments in our lives that carries with it all the elements of human drama: comedic and tragic. Romantic love is not for the faint of heart nor is it in any way limited by circumstance. Each couple experiencing the wonder of finding the one-in-six-billion person who is their perfect match can testify to the miraculous phenomenon — that overwhelming elation of supreme good fortune. The ultimate “I can’t believe this has happened to me” moment.

Along with that elation comes the doubt — “This can’t be happening to me - I don’t deserve this - This can’t be love” — when you wish you’d never met this person.

Although Romance, as a genre, is often denigrated as “fluff,” “trivial,” “inconsequential,” most of this criticism comes from a misplaced sense of intellectual superiority. When I entered the Creative Writing Program at my university, I did so with the objective of writing “important” novels. I took classes in every aspect of writing the meaningful short story to the construction of the meaningful novel.

Try as I did, I wrote …“and they lived happily ever after.” The optimistic ending is in my nature, probably a result of my childhood spent in reading the classic fairy tales of world literature but more probably related to my “cup half full,” “walking on sunshine” point of view.

“Important” novels are those that drag the reader into a downward spiral of misery and hardship. “Frivolous” books lift readers up, provide “the air beneath their wings.”

I know which I’d rather write and read. Life is hard, why make it harder?  

"Don't You Remember, You Told Me You Loved Me, Baby?"

Most people who know me know that my husband and I have been together since high school thus giving us the moniker of being “High School Sweethearts.” What a lot of people don’t know is that we actually broke up twice before we finally got married. The first time was while we were in high school during our senior year. And that can be attributed to being…well…being teenagers, where everything has meaning and yet love can be fleeting. The second time we broke up was a bit more profound.

We were engaged to be married. And while I’m choosing not to go into those details of breakup number two, trust me when I tell you how we finally ended up together makes for a better story. I think we’d been apart for three months and during that time not being with my then ex-fiancé was like having a void in my life. But how does one go about getting their one true love back? The answer is; leave it to Mother Nature!

Upstate New York, where we lived way back in 1970’s was in the midst of a typical mid-winter heavy snowfall. My mother and I were driving home in her gold Duster from Albany where she worked and I attended college. As the snow storm made travel nearly impossible we realized we had two choices for which road to travel home on, the high road or literally the low river road. As fate would have it, we decided on the latter, which would eventually leave us stranded at the bottom of a very long, windy hill along route 9-J. Now my mother adored my

ex-fiancé and she pretty much thought I was a crazy woman for leaving him. But as we sat there all alone on the dark road with the snow falling at hard rate, and nothing but time on our hands, (I may have been having visions of our frozen bodies being discovered in the early dawn hours by a snowplow driver), she quietly reminded me that Tom told me if I ever needed anything to call him. My mother was pretty sure that that night was a good time to take him up on his promise. So I “volunteered” to get out of the car, and trudge through the knee deep snow, down a long driveway to what turned out to be the house of a high school classmate whose mother graciously let me in so I could make the all-important, life altering phone call.

Tom graciously agreed to come out into the now massive storm to rescue the damsels in distress. I have to admit that when I saw the headlights of his brother’s Jeep coming towards us through the blinding snow, my heart began to race.  My mother eagerly moved to the back seat so our Knight in Shining Armor could take the wheel. His brother hooked a tow strap to my mother’s bumper and towed my mother’s car up the road. Now as all this was taking place Tom and I were in the front seat with the glow from the dashboard lights surrounding us. I laid my hand in the middle of the seat and within minutes I felt the heat of him as he covered his hand over mine, giving a reassuring squeeze. We both knew the gesture meant so much more than just “Hey, you’re safe now.” For us it was a new beginning.

As I looked across the expanse of the space that separated us, I knew we were getting back together. I remember saying, “I know we should remember the song playing on the radio right now for the rest of our lives.” He chuckled. And to this day the only thing I know about that night, is I’m forever thankful my mother and I chose the low road, and the song on the radio…well I can tell you it was a Carpenter’s song.