All You Need Is Love

The first time I encountered Shakespeare, I was an eighth grader desperate to read the part of Juliet. By the time I was a junior in high school, I was a full-fledged Shakespeare Groupie.


I spent hours pouring over his poetry. Sonnet 116 was my favorite.

As a 16-year old self-proclaimed hopeless romantic, this poem had one meaning to me, and one meaning alone. Love, in the romantic sense, in it's truest form, was unbreakable. And love, in my 16-year-old mind, was the heterosexual, boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy and girl get married in a big church sort of way.


It wasn't until college that I began to think of love in the broader sense. Love for family. Love for friends. Love for land and country and nature. And suddenly, my favorite Shakespearean sonnet took on a whole new meaning for me.


As a teenager, I read the poem and thought to myself, "Someday my prince will come. Someday I will find a love that is bigger than myself. And someday I will walk down the aisle with that prince and become his wife."


There was never any doubt that marriage would be my future. I never had to wonder if I'd be allowed to celebrate that big love with friends and family. I never had to alter my course or dream my dream in a different way in order to appease society's idea of "Love."


Marriage, to me, isn't about religion. It is for some people though, and that's ok with me. Marriage is, and should be about two people, two families, two bloodlines coming together in celebration and Love. It is a commitment, a binding agreement, and yes, in it's rawest form, a contract. The United States allows people of all races, cultures, and backgrounds take part in that ritual. 


There are Jewish ceremonies with their chuppahs and their glass stomping and their obligatory "Mazel Tov!"


There are Chinese ceremonies with their colorful robes, processionals, and ample feasts.


There are traditional African ceremonies, where the bride and groom jump over the broom.


There are Christian ceremonies with prayer and Bible verses and priests who bless the nuptials. 


There are civil ceremonies where God's name isn't mentioned at all.


There are weddings where people dress up like Pirates. Halloween-themed weddings. Star Wars weddings with costumes and plastic light sabers and stuffed Yoda's presiding.


All of these weddings have two things in common: 1) a marriage license and 2) a heterosexual couple.


I'm not saying that there's no place for God or religion in marriage. In fact, if that is your belief system, I am 100% in support of it. I support your right to marry the one you love in the manner you choose. 


Can you do the same? 


Equality. Rights. That's all we want.


Last year, my husband was diagnosed with cancer. As we went through the mountains of paperwork that comes with a major surgery, I was never asked what my role in his recovery would be. I am his wife. I have his last name. We are married, with a valid marriage license. Therefore, I am the person who will be by his side. I am the one who will ask questions of the doctors and expect them to be answered. I am his partner, emotionally and legally. I never had to worry that I would be sent from the room with my questions unanswered. It never occurred to me to worry that a decision regarding Brian's healthcare would be made by someone who didn't live every waking moment with his best interests at heart. Never, in that week of worry and dread and illness, was I made to feel that I didn't belong in that chair right beside his bed. It is my right. As a wife.


When I let myself imagine, even for a second, that this had all happened before we were legally married, it absolutely terrifies me. As "just his girlfriend," would I have been granted the same respect? Would decisions regarding his recovery have been asked of his mother--someone neither of us trust? Would those decisions be made by his father--whom we adore but who lives on the other side of the country? Would I be allowed to stay overnight? Would I be allowed to ask questions? Would they be answered?


Now imagine what it would have been like if we were both men. Gay men who had been in a relationship for 7 years, who were undoubtedly committed to one another, but who, under South Carolina State Law, were not allowed to marry due to their sexual orientation. 


Imagine the feeling of a door closing in your face with your loved one on the other side. And you are not allowed to enter because someone else deems you unworthy of the same rights as the straight couple in the room next door.


I can't imagine anything more heart-wrenching, or more unfair, than that.


So when I woke up this morning and saw this photo circulating on Twitter, I was overcome.

Kudos to you, New York. You've set the bar yet again. The fight isn't over--in fact it's only just begun. I only hope the rest of the nation catches up soon.


And I have a feeling that, wherever he is now, ol' Willie Shakespeare is smiling because we FINALLY figured it out.

Love Expressions

My husband and I share the kind of relationship that tends to cause reactions. If you're a hopeless romantic, you'll think we're adorable, bordering on saccharine sweet. If you're a member of the "I Hate Lovey Dovey Couples" club, you'll most likely gag and look away.


Those who know us have witnessed this first hand. We text each other constantly throughout the day, we have silly little sayings and phrases we use, and we don't hesitate to be affectionate in front of other people. I'm not saying we suck face in public (much), I'm just saying that it's apparent to anyone around us that we're not just married, we're not just in love, we are two halves that make a whole.


Expressing my feelings came very easy to me from a young age. Being surrounded by love does that to a person. One of my fondest memories is sitting on my grandfather's lap, singing "A Bushel and a Peck." (<---not me, but she's rootin' tootin' adorable)

My Paw.

I was very young, but I remember the smell of his cologne, the way his laugh sounded. And feeling utterly and completely cherished. Not every child gets to belong to a family that makes them feel that way. I was lucky enough to have it, and I never take it for granted.


My parents were always very affectionate with me as well. I wasn't the kid who shied away from kissing my Mom in the mornings when she dropped me off at school. I adored my father, and all my friends knew it. When my brother and I would get into a fight, we weren't sent to separate rooms to fume. Mom would put us on the couch and force us to hold hands. (Yes, it was a small torture.) But by the end of it all, we'd put away our mad, and inevitably would end up giggling and poking fun at each other again. Love was just the way our world worked.


By the time I met my husband, I'd been through some heartaches--the kind every young girl goes through in the act of searching for love. I'd become a little more reserved in how I tossed around the "L" word. I held it close to the vest, and didn't use it for just anyone. When I felt myself falling for B, I remember feeling exhilarated, but also leery. Would this be for good? Or would he break me the way the others had? I held back for days before telling him how I felt, and when I did, he expressed his feelings for me as honestly as he could.

We've held onto that honesty, that simplicity, in the years since. And we share our feelings in as many different ways as we can think of...text messages, emails, notes and letters and cards. 

Translation, coming soon.

When you're young, and in love, and still have a bit of that hopeless romantic inside, you tend to get creative with love expressions. Brian brought "I Love You To the Moon and Back" to the party. I channeled that feeling from the memory with my grandfather and added "With a Bushel and a Peck and a Hug Around the Neck" to the mix. The ever popular phrase "No Take Backs" from our childhood was added, along with the ever-popular Buzz Lightyear phrase, "To Infinity and Beyond." Now, our daily love expression, which we have learned to abbreviate (shown above) is: "I love you to the moon and back, with a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck, NO TAKE BACKS!, oodles and oodles and oodles, The End, That's All Folks."


You may think it's cute. You may think it's vomit worthy. But...it's how our marriage works. I want him to know, without a shadow of a doubt, every single day, that I'm madly in love with him. Just like I know, without a shadow of a doubt, every single day, that he's madly in love with me.


That became even more important last year when we discovered Brian's cancer. The moment we didn't think we'd have to face until we were old and grey was pushed in our faces before we'd had a chance to really live. When you're faced with the possibility of losing the person who fills your life with light, everything else in the world falls away. The most important thing, above anything else, becomes making certain that your person knows the very essence of the feelings you have for them. And in those moments, more often than not, the words and phrases and notes and text messages aren't needed. 


For 17 terrifying days, and 17 sleepless nights, my entire existence was about holding his hand. Watching him worry. Pushing my love toward him, around him, into him. To buoy him up, to give him something to latch on to. To help him survive.


And on that 18th day, when the sun rose and the tumor was out and the doctors said he wasn't just fine, he was remarkable, we were surrounded by that love. And we smiled.


Our love expressions remind us to never take it, all of it, for granted. So yeah, it's a little silly. And it's a little excessive. But now that the storm has passed, it feels good to be silly, and excessive, and more in love than ever before.

For B.

Here's the Thing About Valentine's Day

I was born a hopeless romantic.


Ok, well, I don't know if THAT'S possible, but when you read fairy tales where the princess is always saved by the prince, who also happens to be wealthy, comes with a 401K, decent health insurance, and looks like Chris Pine, it becomes embedded into your tiny 7-year-old brain that love equals romance to the tenth power. (Flowers, fat babies masquerading as archers, and quotes from Shakespeare included.)


I remember having a conversation with my high school English teacher (and best adult friend) one afternoon, after my high school sweetheart had ended our 3 year love affair. I sat in her classroom, spring sunshine piercing through the window, watching the dust motes float in the air as I sobbed hysterically over my heart ache. 


"This," I wailed, "is NOT what love is supposed to feel like. This isn't how it's supposed to go. He's supposed to love me FOREVER. That's what we promised."


She sighed and said, "Abby, my friend, you are truly a hopeless romantic."


It's the first time I'd ever heard the phrase.


By the time I reached college, I was determined not to let my heart be bruised again. I thought of myself as the President and Founder of the She Who Hates Men Club, and vowed that I would graduate at the top of my class. No man would distract me from that goal. I would walk across that stage, gowned and capped, raise my fist to the air and bellow "I AM WOMAN!"


And all my friends knew how I felt. And secretly pitied me.


On Valentine's Day my freshman year, a girlfriend of mine gave me a box of chocolates. It was shaped like a heart, and Elvis looked up at me adoringly from the lid. When I opened the box, "Love Me Tender," played quietly. I laughed, thanked her, and she eventually went on her way.


I sat on the floor of my dorm room, powering through chocolates, allowing the song to play over and over again until Elvis began to sound like the teacher from The Peanuts. And I cried my eyes out.


See, the truth was, I desperately wanted to be loved. But I wasn't willing to allow myself to take the chance, walk the plank, jump off the cliff.


Fast forward a year and a half later, and I was faced with that cliff. 

I'd started dating, and this man was everything I wanted. Smart, witty, sarcastic, adorable, handsome, a just a little weird. And he treated me like something priceless and breakable. But he came with baggage. And he had already planned his future, which included moving to the west coast to live with his father.


The choice was before me: allow this man to walk out of my life, let him go fulfill his destiny in the great state of Nevada. Or, fling myself from the cliff, tell him I love him and ask him to stay.


I flung.


He stayed.


We were married on September 25, 2004, in a starlit ceremony on the Isle of Palms. And we've never looked back since.

So here's the thing about Valentine's Day--sure, it's a nice day to buy a card, and send some flowers, and maybe have a special dinner out. But for me, the romance in a day like today is lost a little, because we spend every day taking care to tell each other how we feel. 


It's a modern-day fairy tale, and I get to live it every single day of my life.