How to Make Love Stay

I recently, at the none-too-gentle-prodding of a dear friend of mine, read Still Life with Woodpecker, by Tom Robbins. I enjoyed the book immensely (score one for Dear Friend) and not just because it was about redheads.

One of the primary focuses of the story was the question "How do you make love stay?" The book posits several theories on how it might be accomplished, which of course got me to thinking about the question as it applies to my own life. Which brings me to today's events.

Nathan and I have been cleaning the apartment today (it's a time-consuming process, as we are not just "picking up" the apartment- we are scrubbing things) and the whole thing has put me in a ridiculously good mood. I've been working the back part of the house (bedroom, bathroom, studio/ratroom) and he's been working the front (kitchen, living and dining rooms) so we haven't really been together during all of it, but it is making me feel so very extra affectionate towards him, almost like we were on a date. Around one o'clock we had leftovers for lunch and watched a movie we'd seen before (O Brother Where Art Thou), then went to the park so I could help him with his photo of the day (Swingers). And right this particular moment (as we continue our house-cleaning break) he's working on dinner: fennel-encrusted pork with root vegetables. I went in and offered to help, but he said he was fine and then remarked how much he enjoys cooking- that he wished he'd known cooking could be fun back when he was a bachelor. I smiled and told him it's generally more fun when there's someone you're cooking for.

So it's been a very domestic day for us, a day of doing things that needed to be done, but things that needed to be done for us and no one else. From the outside, not a particularly spectacular or amazing or romantic day at all.

And yet it really has been.

You see, what struck me today is that maybe one way to make Love stay (that a lot of people seem to overlook) is just this: be kind to it. I'm not talking about big, extravagant gestures, like buying Love a pony. Sure, that might impress Love, but it won't ease the burden on its soul. True kindness is in the little things, those thousands of little things that most people don't even think about, but that pile up around and above us until we're drowning in them. Being kind by letting someone go ahead of you in line, or holding the door for someone, or even by speaking gently to them after a rough day- these are the sorts of things that Love is impressed by. Kindness feeds Love, and Love (I have found) is prone to sticking around where it knows it can get a good meal.