When love is in the air

I was scheduled to have a colonoscopy and endoscopy today to check out my insides, so my wonderful friend, Lois, emailed to wish me well. I emailed back to thank her and to tell her I love her.

She wrote back again and said: “You tell me that more than Eliot does. I love you, too.” I’ve been laughing at her response all day. Eliot is Lois’s husband.

Seriously, I love to tell people I love that I love them. And I love when people tell me that they love me.

I don’t mean quickly muttering “Love Ya” when you’re saying goodbye to a friend, writing LOVE at the end of an email, or during a passionate moment.  I mean saying “I Love You” just because you really do. Slowly, right to someone’s face, when he or she least expects it.

David sometimes tells me he loves me in the middle of a conversation or when he calls to say hello in the middle of the day. He even tells me he loves me when I’m being a pain in the neck, which can be frequently.

Listen to 30 seconds of Charlie Rich singing a “A Very Special Love Song.” You’ll get just what I mean. It’s one of those FOF songs.

The man who recently drove me to the airport escaped Burma a couple of years ago. A political activist, he had protested his country’s military government and faced certain arrest if he stayed. Worse, he had to leave behind his wife and two teenage children. Most definitely, they would not have all survived if they tried to escape together, he told me.

The Burmese military throwing tear gas at demonstrators

What a tragic state of affairs. He stood up for his principles and had to sacrifice life with his loved ones. I assume he thought it was better to be apart than to be thrown into a Burmese prison.

Reportedly a rare photo inside a Burmese prison, taken by a Chinese photographer

But will his escape cause harm to his family?

“Maybe the government will change,” I said, hopefully.  “Yes, it might, but it won’t be for a long time,” he answered.  (As a matter of fact, the military prohibited a parliamentary government from convening in 1990, I learned from Wikipedia. The military has ruled Burma for 50 years.)

When I try to put myself in this man’s shoes, the idea of leaving my children and family makes me crazy. But living in jail because I protested my government would make me crazy, too.

No human being should have to make choices like this.

My mother, May, did not like to leave her comfort zone. She craved routine. My father was offered a position as a career officer in Europe after WWII, but she said nothing doing. Leaving the security of home would have been overwhelming to her. She stopped working when dad came back from England, and I was born nine months later.

Mom went shopping for groceries every Friday, went to the hairdresser every Thursday evening, served us dinner on snack tables (hey, it was the 50s and 60s) in front of the TV every night at 5, vacuumed and made the beds at precisely the same time every morning after breakfast.

I tried to convince her to start working when my sisters and I were grown, but she refused.

She was forced to leave her comfort zone when she was 66 and my dad died. She moved to an apartment in Manhattan, joined the 60 Plus Program at the 92 Street Y and spent the next 20 years in a new comfort zone she created for herself.

She went to the Y practically every weekday, played bridge, Rummy Q  and Mah Jong on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, attended Shakespeare classes on Wednesday, and had dinner out with Y friends on Friday.

She rarely ventured outside of her CZ. If my sisters or I invited her to do something new, she made excuses. “That’s bridge day. I can’t disappoint the women,” she’d say.

I didn’t inherit a CZ gene. I thrive on change and challenge.  I once loved gold jewelry exclusively; now I prefer silver. I’ve never bought the same shade of lipstick twice and my fave perfume is never fave for too long. I’ll knit obsessively for three years in a row, then I won’t pick up the needles for the next two. My “look” has been preppy, nerdy, sexy and avant garde.  I’ve created new jobs for myself since I started working at 21, and taken up pilates, followed by weights, then yoga–with a treadmill fixation in between.

I’m not comfortable if  I’m feeling too comfortable, I get restless easily and relaxation isn’t my strong suit.

Although I’m not a fan of routines, I do enjoy some of them: Walking the dog, watching reruns of Two and a Half Men at 11 pm, and going to my sister’s for Thanksgiving and July 4th. David and I also took mom out for dinner most Saturday nights the last couple of years of her life. It’s sad that  routine ended.