As we get older, many memories fade. Some are lost forever. February flows outside its boundaries and spills over into March, and spring is intermixed with autumn in a haze that blurs the details of ever accumulating yesterdays.
As the years pass we hardly notice the segues that move us from one of life’s stages to another, and time softens the lines that separate the boys and girls we were from the men and women we became—and, yet again, from the old men and women we become.
Young people can form in their minds no image of themselves in years beyond their youth as they busily go about the living of today. Men like me hold jealously to the past, gathering precious moments trapped in time as the ripe, low hanging fruit of life’s harvest. We gather them carefully and preserve them with care—all the care we wish we had given them when they were the substance of today.
Among the more precious memories stored away in my heart is the memory of a morning in March, 1968, the morning when I saw Mary Ann for the first time. There is no creature to be found upon this earth quite so beautiful as a beautiful girl, and no girl has ever been so beautiful in my eyes as was that smiling, laughing, busting-with-life girl who walked past me in the hallway of our high school on that special morning. She was seventeen.
On a Sunday morning, a few Sundays ago, I listened as Mary Ann talked while dressing and making herself ready for morning worship at the church that has become so dear to us. As she brushed her hair she lamented the few gray hairs she claims have recently appeared, and commented that she wished her hair was as thick as it had been when she was young. She joked that our bathroom mirror must be defective. It must be somehow out of whack, she insisted, because the reflection in the mirror no longer resembles her.
Mary Ann continued to tell me what a shock it is each time she looks into that mirror and sees a graying woman she doesn’t recognize staring back at her and mimicking her every move. And, the wrinkles. She wondered aloud if prayer might slow the wrinkles.
I had heard such talk before, but never paid much attention. No woman, I knew, has ever been pleased with her own appearance, and I hadn’t noticed any change in my beautiful wife. On that Sunday morning, though, it occurred to me that, perhaps, I should give Mary Ann a closer look. Was it possible that some change had escaped my notice?
I stood behind her as she stared into the mirror brushing her hair, and I looked carefully at her reflection in the glass. My first impression was that she looked the same as she had always looked. Then, suddenly, I realized that I wasn’t really seeing the reflection in the mirror. I was seeing only what I expected to see.
What I had expected to see was an image that was frozen in time, a snapshot forever set in my mind and heart, the image of a beautiful seventeen year old girl with whom I’d fallen instantly and irremediably in love. It was the image I had always seen whenever I looked at her. It was the image I had seen on our wedding day, the day our son was born, the day we celebrated our 25th anniversary, and the day we celebrated our 38th. In all those years, remarkably, the image had never changed.
I looked again, this time with a more objective eye—an eye focused only upon the real, unretouched and unfiltered image in the glass. What I saw surprised me. What I saw was something entirely new.
As I stood there looking at Mary Ann, I felt again, after more than four decades, that same staggering swell of emotion, that same excitement, unsettling limerence and passion that had arrested me in the hallway of that high school forty-one years ago. I saw a new image. I saw my wife in a way that I had never seen her before.
I saw on her face a few wrinkles that hadn’t been there when I kissed her just moments earlier. I gently turned her face toward me and looked at each line. They were the lines of a love story written plainly across her pretty face.
Each line was a testament to a worry Mary Ann has carried in her heart for me, a scar won in battle when, so long ago, together we took on the world for love, a monument to a sacrifice made, a trial endured in the cause of “us”, or the happy product of a million flashes of that special smile that has given sunlight to my days and a warm glow to thousands of nights in her arms.
The incandescent room light reflected off her hair, and I could for the first time pick out a silver hair, one here and another there.
Throughout our life together, I thought, Mary Ann has so many times made herself anew, transformed and adapted in ways both practical and delightful. She has at every moment been everything I wanted, everything I needed, and more than ever I could have dreamed. She has been all of that so effortlessly, so happily, anticipating from day to day and year to year what I could not have imagined about myself. Now, she is changing again.
There is magic in being always new, yet always the same. There is magic in the memory of a seventeen year old girl who captured a boy’s heart forever with only a smile. There is magic in every moment spent with her today.
There is no creature to be found upon this earth quite as beautiful as a beautiful woman, and no woman could ever be as beautiful in my eyes as the woman I am holding tonight.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I read this story and all of the linked related posts too. All I can say is that this is some romance! I especially liked the post about the trip to Callaway Gardens. I have a very fond memory of a day at Callaway Gardens myself.
I’m so glad my computer is up and running again. It would be sad indeed if I had missed this post. What a wonderful story of love you two share. Your blessing has been a blessing to me also. Thanks for helping me prove my affirmation that true love is indeed attainable. It is my hope that others too may experience this absolute love that I share with my Debbie and that is also shared by you and Mary Ann.
Prentice, once again you artistry (or craftmanship, if you prefer) with words is superb reading! How beautifully you express the deep, deep love for Mary Ann, that I’ve observed at our church!
How long have you two been married? This piece reads like you’ve been forever. . . . and never closer than now!
Oh, and you taught me a new word today: limerence. When I looked it up in an on-line dictionary it added depth to what you were expressing at that place in the post. So, thanks for helping increase my vocabulary. I owe you one!
I read from the other comments that some of people leaving comments know the person who wrote this article and that they know the Mary Ann that he talks about too. If those comments were not here I don’t think that I would believe any of the things he writes about. I don’t believe that there are too many people who can be in a relationship for as long as thatand still love each other in a romantic way. I can understnad how some people can be like partners in business and be really close friends and even care about one another but I don’t see how romance can last as long as that. Romance goes away in most relationships after a year or so and almost nobody is still “in love” with their partner after more than a few years. I don’t think that most people are biologically made like the person who writes this blog and they grow tired of being with the same person all the time. You may still like the person as a friend but I can’t see the romance lassting.
The other thing is that people are changing all the time so the person I fall in love with now won’t even be the same person in a few years. I will change too and we may or may not have anything in common then. If you don’t change I think that life will be a very boring. So I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing to be in love for as long as the person writing. I believe he thinks that it is a good thing and that may be good for him. I wonder if it is really as good as he thinks it is for his wife? It might all be great but I don’t know.
It is amazing to me, and sad, how little some people know about love. Yes, Marlene, it is possible to stay “in love” for an entire lifetime. Yes, it is possible for romance to be as strong at 50 or 60 or 80 as it is at 25. Circumstances change in life, but real love never changes. If you are finding that your love is changing every “year or so” then what you thought was love wasn’t really love at all.