selfie preservation #007
Tell me about a love story you Stan** **I am pretty sure Stan is what the cool kids are referring to when they want to say really believe in or are rooting for. basically tell me a true love story!
You know how it goes -
This is a love story about a boy and girl from a small town near a big lake in the middle of nowhere. A girl who had everything, the eldest daughter, big Boss’s Daughter Energy, and a boy from the wrong side of town who had nothing except Big First Son Energy, a pull-out couch, and a lot of talent.
This is a love story about a high school quarterback and a cheerleader. About regional high school records and a place with no girls’ sports, recruiting letters and major life choices. This is a love story about rival universities an hour away from each other. About fraternities and road trips, bell bottoms, and kegs in the dorm showers. A love story about other people who married someone else.
This is a love story about a wedding with 400 guests and a conversion from his Catholicism to her Lutheranism. About a small duplex near her alma mater and a first born son who shared a middle name with his father, named after his grandfather. A love story where her brother with special needs moves in and stays forever. This is a love story about believing in getting it right the first time around.
This is a love story about her finding a profession and being the breadwinner. A love story about a stay-at-home dad before some people thought it was ok for such a thing to exist. About coaching basketball and volunteering in the classroom with the moms. This is a love story about family road trips, camping vacations, soccer tournaments, Christmas in the small town by the big lake in the middle of nowhere. This is a love story about proving everyone wrong.
My parents, probably outside my mom’s dorm at MSU, ca. 1974
This is a love story about late night fights, slurred accusations and slammed doors. About hidden car keys and bounced checks. This is a love story with long distances, “needing space,” “getting help,” Serenity Prayers, sponsors, court orders and divorces. This is a love story about loving each other too much for too long.
This is a love story about excuses and secrets. A love story about regret. About humiliation. This is a love story about needing help and never quite asking for it. This is a love story about broken windows and broken hearts. Broken teeth and broken bones. About near-death experiences and saying goodbye in hospitals. This is a love story about protecting one other.
This is a love story about second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh chances. About visits to rehab centers and collect calls from jails. A love story where it took the man decades to realize that his father didn’t love him the way he needed to be loved. A love story about his mother dying while he still needed her. About her family’s “don’t ask, don’t tell,” approach. This is a love story about a time when being sick like this was seen as a personal and moral failure and not the mental illness and lingering trauma that it actually was.
This is a love story about generosity. About helping anyone who needed it. This is a love story of a man agreeing to whatever couples’ costume she wanted for every Halloween. A love story about taking care of not only one another, but her family, her friends. This is a love story about her asking him to show everyone that he was the good person she saw and knew and loved. This is a love story about him doing just that, and it never being enough. This is a love story about optimism, a hope that love would be enough.
This is a love story about a good dad and a good mom. About a dad who loved his family more than he ever loved himself. About a good mom who did what she had to do.
This is a love story about a phone call in the rain. About the coincidence that they would all be home that weekend. A love story about the next of kin, kids in their 20s, making decisions at a local funeral home.
This is a love story that ends with three children spreading ashes at memorials on the National Mall. A love story about a woman wading into their Great Lake, water cloudy with the ashes of the man she never stopped loving.
This is the love story about my mom and dad.
weekly wanderings
Please watch this series, which so brutally and beautifully asks the two questions I find most important - what is at stake? And who gets to decide?
We’ve all seen the graphic about higher risks of blood clots in normal everyday things like, oh say, birth control, but has your period been weird since you got vaccinated?