Love Is ...

Love Is …

By Allison Adams 02-06-06 / Submitted to The Greeneville Sun (as “I Love Ya’ Gallons”) on 02-07-06

While you all are standing elbow to elbow in the Hallmark store, plucking one heart-shaped, rose-embossed, greeting card after another from its place on the rack, and reading through line after line of someone’s idea professing Love in perfect prose, I’ll be at the BP using my $2.99 to buy something meaningful … like a gallon of gas.

Long ago, I abandoned the ritual of combing through stacks of mass-produced Valentine’s Day greeting cards searching for just the right one for my mister – surrendering the notion that I would ever find one that sufficiently describes what Love means to me.

For some of you I know that Love is blind – its a red, red, rose – its all you need – its in the air – it’s the answer – it “completes” you - it makes the world go ‘round.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

For me, Love is most perfectly described using a series of run-on sentences:

Love is understanding that when I say “I’ll be ready in 5 minutes” it’ll really be 15 (or maybe even 20) and then waiting patiently in the house for me to be ready instead of sitting behind the wheel of the car parked in the driveway with the engine running.

Love is remembering which sections of the Sunday paper I enjoy reading as I sip my morning coffee and then pulling them out and setting them aside for me to read first.

Love is tolerating my habit of watching a wee bit of TV before I go to sleep each night even though you’re a “reader” and would prefer to do so in the quiet and then taking care to lay the TV remote on my pillow when you turn down the bed.

Love is accepting that I’ve volunteered you to help with one of my “projects” without first asking you if you had other plans like watching the Big Game and then cheerfully coming along with me and acting as if there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.

Love is patiently allowing me to agonize over the crossword puzzle even though you’re dying to take a crack at it and then when I finally surrender, pretending to also struggle with 29 across even though you knew it right off the bat.

Love is agreeing that the floral quilt I bought for the bed looks very nice despite the fact that the only request you made was that I please buy one with no floral print and then also noticing that the crowning touch of the bed ensemble is the addition of ten fluffy, fringed, tasseled, ruffled, pillows, placed “just so” that are only there for decoration and not meant to lay your head upon.

Love is taking the time to go through the production required to make that bed look “just so” every morning before you leave for work even though you’re not the housewife.

Love is understanding that I’ve been so busy with extra-curricular activities that I haven’t taken the time to tackle the laundry and then knowing when your dresser drawer is empty that you need to fish clean underwear out of the dryer and while you’re in there you just go ahead and fold the whole load.

Now, there’s a Valentine’s Day card I’d pay good gas money for.