Dear Mom we don’t pick who we fall in love with

Dear Mom we don’t pick who we fall in love with

I remember you consoling me after a particularly bad breakup and you told me, “We don’t pick who we fall in love with, but we do get to pick who we stay with.” At the time it was poignant and a bit cryptic. If I remembered more of the conversation perhaps it would make more sense in context, but that one line is all I have.

Did you mean that I should be lucky to be in love but if I happen to be in a good thing I should not run off just because I fell in love again?

Was it really a comment on something I was not even familiar? A lament on a lost love?

Did you mean that when I am in love I should do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t get away?

I don’t fall in love easy, but I do love being in love. I have always lived by the rule that I will have someone special or no one at all. And for the most part it has worked for me. For me, the greatest loves are the ones where I ask myself “Why?” It is inconvenient or exasperating or just a really bad idea. Yet there is something there. Je ne cest quoi. I have read that that spark I feel is really just pheromones and facial symmetry. But if it could be explained it really wouldn’t be what it is.

I know if you have love in your life it can make up for a lot of things you are missing but if you have everything else and you do not have love you are never fulfilled.

I realize you don’t have a magical answer any more than I do, there is just a little bit of that feeling you had as a kid when your parents still knew everything. You know the one. It happens right before they turn into teenagers and they get the feeling their parents don’t know anything.

Whatever it is, questioning it never seems to be a good idea. Best advice is when you feel the butterflies, live in the moment.

Love Not Me For Comely Grace

Love not me for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye or face;
Nor for any outward part,
No, nor for a constant heart:
For these may fail or turn to ill,
So thou and I shall sever.
Keep, therefore, a true woman's eye,
And love me still, but know not why,
So hast thou the same reason still
To doat upon me ever.

John Wilbye 1574 – 1638

Love Mike