2001-05-08~~1:40 p.m.
It's all about perspective

A couple of weeks ago we went to the wedding of two good friends of ours. The bride and groom looked, as most do, marvelously happy as they enjoyed their wedding day. I have thought of them virtually everyday since then. I have an urge to call them at night before I go to bed and ask them if they are still as in love as they were that day. A part of me must think that if I can pinpoint the exact moment that the passionate I-want-to-marry-you-and-spend-every-moment-in-your-arms love turns into the at-least-I-have-someone-who-sometimes-seems-to-love-me love that I could go back in time and make some adjustment that would keep that from happening.

I miss the excitement our young love had. We find it occasionally, which just makes me miss it that much more the rest of the time. As we danced at our friends' wedding it was as if the last fifteen years of ho-hum were swept away. I smiled as I looked into his eyes and said something like, "I wish you always loved me as much as you do right now."

He looked at me like I was crazy (a look that is none too foreign when I try to get philosophical about our relationship). He says that his love for me doesn't change from day to day. He says that he loves me more today than he did the day we planned to spend the rest of our lives together. I say we have very different ways of experiencing life.

It's all about perspective, I guess. You see, I am a pretty passionate person. My highs are very high, lets call them +100 for the purpose of comparison. My lows are very low, probably -100. I should probably throw in that I am capable of navigating that entire range in about a tenth of a second and, in general, I spend far more time at either end of the spectrum than I do anywhere near the middle.

My husband, on the other hand, operates on a scale that runs from about +5 to about -3. That's it. And he spends close to 99% of his life between +1 and -1. Plus five is reserved for really significant stuff like when his favorite team wins a close or important game. But for most of the things that happen in daily life, the positives will be *celebrated* at +1.

While it seems it would be nice at times to wander through life unannoyed by the parents who park their cars in the drop off lane at the elementary school or those who let their three-year-olds play unsupervised in the street, I'm not sure that I'd want to trade that intense aggravation if it also meant giving up the way I feel when my kids earn honors at school or hit the baseball farther than I thought they could.... or the way I felt dancing with my husband at our friends' wedding.

Sometimes I wish that he shared my passion. I wish that he could love me with the depth of feeling that I love him. But then I think about all the times when I hate him so much that I could spit nails. And I know that I'm probably better off just the way we are.

-Alice