There Once Was Love

How many kinds of love are there?

Familial love is that of a parent for a child, child for a parent, sibling love, love of the extended family. That had lots of exercise in our family, as my mother was the 13th and last child in her family. My dad was one of three brothers, and my wife is the first of 15! How my sister and I ended up with just the two of us, I'm not sure.

"Puppy Love" which is often emblazoned on stuffed toys, is still poorly understood, except that it is characterized as being youthful and especially fragile. I remember having a crush on a sweet girl named Rose when I was probably 10 years old. I would ride by her home hoping she might be outside, and I even found a sticker with a picture of a beautiful rose which I stuck on the front fender of my bicycle as testimony to my affection.

"Love" as in the expressions "I love my job (car, timeshare, etc.) should probably be replaced by "I really like my.... ." The "really like" applies to other favored choices such as a favorite poem, song, band, movie, book, color, etc.

There is love of the gospel which, with or without the written text, can extend to a love of God, and the "I love my Savior" love. This kind of love equates closely with a person's love of country. I worked 20 years for my country, and I'm still dedicated to a love that wants it to be at least as good a place to be proud of when my 17 grandchildren reach their adult years.

Each year on Valentine's Day a portion of mankind takes a few moments to consider who will receive a gift of love, a beautiful card, flowers, a box of chocolates, even an engagement ring! Many of those gifts are tokens of "love"...though the engagement ring, if accepted, had better be a lot more than just a token.

And that brings us to the love shared (hopefully) between two individuals born into different families, even different cultures, and what characterizes that love. With half of legal marriages ending in divorce, and many couples choosing not to even tie a knot that binds, this traditional adult love seems at times almost an endangered species!

Of our five children, three have divorced, two of those have remarried, and one of those "second time around" marriages has also been abandoned.

Love seems at times to be a will-o-the-wisp, so elusive that some relationships, even married ones, last only a few days or weeks, and even some of those "lasted too long" according to one or both of the newlyweds.

My dad had the right idea for a honeymoon, and it wasn't a trip to Bermuda, Hawaii, or Disneyland either. He somehow convinced my mother to go canoeing with him on an extended trip down the remote Allagash River in northern Maine. [How remote? See the link below.]

Mom said this about that trip: "If I was ever going to leave your father, I would have left him then!" Had she done so, one of them would have had a very long walk back to anything approaching civilization! There was just their one canoe.

The "love at first sight" variety is perhaps the most difficult to explain, for what is it that in that instant of first meeting, seeing, exchanging a greeting, lights sometimes mutual fires of love that can last two lifetimes? Obviously "'til death do us part" was entered into with real devotion, and a love that stayed the course, for the two had become one inspite of all of life's and marriage's tests and trials.

My wife and I first met because I saw her riding up an avenue on a moped. I was so sure that I wanted to meet her, that I left an untouched glass of fresh lime juice I had just paid for, went to my car and was fortunate enough (for me) to catch up with her just as she parked the moped at her home. Now, 49 years later, she is still helping me to become the other half of "us."

For the other loves which fall short of the "happily ever after" ideal, some would contend that the original love was suffocated, killed, misdirected, even assassinated, or simply...like a failed garden... allowed to wither and die, a Puppy Love that went to the dogs.

Prince Charming and Cinderella seem a likely stretch of someone's vivid imagination, a good story, well told, about dreams that just might come true. If you are in that kind of a relationship, even if it's Princess Charming and Cindereddy, clue us in. Was it a Puppy Love that has lasted, a love at first sight that can answer the question why, or a relationship in which the love spark continues to set the forest on fire for a pleasing afterglow in the later years?

We would love to hear your answers.

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Copyright 2012-2015 Demas W. Jasper All rights reserved.