Can We Still Find Moments of Gooey?

Ah, that feeling of falling in love—all excitement and obsession and what I like to call “gooey feelings.” It is as if there are no words and no one else has ever fallen in love before! Now some of you pragmatists can argue about endorphins and hormones and such scientific explanations, but as a lover of fine food, I think of it like fresh, home-baked chocolate chip cookies—all gooey and warm and fragrant from the oven.

I was single and unattached for several years as a grown-up and I was not all together convinced that there was a “true love” out there waiting. I visited, I met people and I dated, but I didn’t feel any sense of urgency about it. The only thing I knew for sure was that if I ever partnered with someone again, I wanted the WHOLE PACKAGE; something I had never had before. While I’m old and seasoned enough to know that gooey stage doesn’t last, I still wanted it! I wanted to fall in love and move through all the stages, with the full intent that it would likely be my last such attempt.

I know, it sounds terribly dramatic and maybe even a little romantic. This seems funny to me because I really don’t think of myself as a romantic at all; I don’t do very well with all the flowers-candy-jewelry stuff and tend to be more of a talk-things-to-death kind of gal. I think it was more greed—I wanted the REAL THING and darn it, I wanted gooey for a while before real life jerked me back to reality.

Teri and I often joke about how “the honeymoon is over” even though we have not technically had a honeymoon yet. It is usually when we are battling how best to load the dishwasher or arguing over who gets to walk the dog. We DID have that marvelous, gooey, falling-in-love period where we sort of lived in a bubble of yummy teenage hormones (although I would argue that perimenopausal woman hormones can beat out teenage hormones ANY day!) But, of course, life took over and eventually we had to go back to work, back to family obligations, and just get back into the groove of every day living. According to Teri, THAT is where real love begins.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I want to say that, for me, there are still overwhelming moments of gooey. They tend to creep up on me when we are both staring into the refrigerator trying to figure out what to make for supper or snuggled up watching an episode of Big Love on DVD. I still have moments when I can’t find the words to describe how I feel or what she means to me or when I am so amazed that we are sharing a life together, there is nothing I can do but let the gratitude overtake me.