FOR VALENTINE

FOR VALENTINE’S DAY,
SKIP THE MATH

Journal of Healing – By Mary Koch

Feb. 14, 2007

A friend who has been divorced for a while e-mailed a photo of his new love. “Yes,” he wrote, “she’s too young; however, for now it works well for us.”

Why, I wondered, had he written what sounded like an apology for his girlfriend’s age? Was he anticipating that I would pass judgment? Sure enough, he went on to explain that he and she “get flak” once in a while, but “we ignore most of it.”

I’m a lousy estimator of age. I happen to know my friend’s – we graduated from high school together. Looking at the photo of his girlfriend, I’m guessing the difference in age is not a matter of years but decades.

My husband is 13 years older than I. Soon after we were married (I was 34, he was 47), I commented to his mother that I never felt any difference in ages. She predicted darkly: “You will.”

I’m still waiting.

Sometimes I’ve been a little cheeky about my comparative youth. I threatened that I would beat John “down the Bulldog,” the toughest run on the ski hill, on his 60th birthday.

The only time I came even close to reaching the bottom ahead of him was when I fell. I hurtled downward on the backside of my slick ski duds like a hog in a greased chute. John put on a burst of speed to get ahead of me, blocking my slide before I crashed into a tree.

* * *

IT WASN’T our age difference that turned me into John’s caregiver. He was younger than I am now when he suffered the stroke that totally paralyzed him. I remind myself of that every time I take my own good health and mobility too much for granted. And I wonder what would have happened if the tables were turned. What if I were disabled and John the caregiver?

It wouldn’t have worked as well. He would have been an excellent caregiver; I know that from his tenderness whenever I suffered an ailment before his stroke. I doubt very much, however, that I could have matched John’s patience and courage in accepting complete paralysis and loss of communication.

While we’re into numbers, there’s another one I think about every once in a while. We’ll soon celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary, which represents a kind of equinox for our marriage. With that anniversary, I’ll have spent half our married life – 14 years – as my husband’s caregiver.

* * *

IT COULD be argued that the first half, he was my caregiver. Not in the health care sense, but he certainly was the wiser, the more experienced, the problem solver and the teacher. So he gave me 14 years, and I’ve given the same.

But I don’t think it will ever work out equally. The formula for successfully giving and receiving care is the same as for a good marriage: you give 90 percent of the time, and you gratefully receive the other 90 percent.

When it comes to love, the numbers don’t always add up. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning so famously proclaimed. And she did count, but not with numbers: “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach . . . “

That’s the way to measure love – one worth remembering this Valentine’s day, when we tend to inventory how many dozens of roses, how many carats in the jewelry, even how many years of faithful devotion. What matters, as my friend noted, is only that “for now it works well for us.”

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