THE SEED OF LOVE

Love is a living, growing thing.  It begins as the tiny seed of infatuation and, with the nurturing of time, relationship and nurturing, blossoms into a beautiful, mature creation tenderly designed by Love’s creator: God.

What do a 14 year-old girl and 16 year-old boy know of love?  I was head-over-heels “in love” with Bill.  I faithfully wore his big going-steady ring, complete with wads of tape to keep it from falling off my finger.  My school notebook was covered with hearts and flowers and Bill’s name written in myriads of colors and designs.  I walked on cloud 9.  The seed of infatuation had been planted and for the next 4 ½ years, gradually grew into the blossom of love.

As Bill became the center of my life, he was lovingly welcomed into my family and I was welcomed into his.  Although we went to different schools, we saw each other nearly every day.  Most days he would happen to show up at my house … just in time for dinner.

Often, as he parked his car in front of our house on a summer evening, he would be greeted by my dad who was sitting on the front porch with his bow and arrow.  No, Dad wasn’t going to shoot Bill; he was patiently waiting for a gopher to come out of one of the holes it had dug in our lawn.  He did actually successfully shoot a couple of them.  But, really, Dad?  I mean, it’s embarrassing enough for the entire neighborhood to see your dad play Robin Hood, but for your new boyfriend to see him too?  (When you’re 14 years old EVERYTHING your parents do is SO embarrassing – worthy of exaggerated eye rolls and loud sighs.  I was convinced that my parents embarrassed me on purpose.  Having been a parent, I know that it is true – I did it myself – it’s so much fun.)

Anyway, Mom always had enough food to feed Bill and he was warmly welcomed into our home.  He eventually became a fixture in our family and was always included in our family activities.  I think he became the son that my parents never had.

A LONG TELEPHONE CORD?  NOT!!

There were occasional evenings that he didn’t come over so we would spend hours on the phone together.  We had only one telephone, attached to a 7 foot cord.  If I wanted to talk on the phone, I would have to either sit on the floor in the hallway or on my parents’ bed.  My dad had finally decided that it was time to get a longer cord so I could sometimes use it in my room – that is, until one fateful day.  It was the first day of summer and I had come down with a case of the measles.  Of course I couldn’t see Bill.  However, we did have the telephone, so we spent the entire day talking on the phone.  Unbeknownst to me, my dad had been trying to call my mom all day long and was never able to get through.  He was also scheduling the telephone company to install the new cord.  He was so angry by the end of the day, my hopes of a phone that reached my room were dashed.  I never did get it and spent the rest of my teenage years talking on the phone either in the hallway or on my parents’ bed.

A LESSON ON SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

When we first began to date, I was painfully conscious of my appearance and hated that I had to wear glasses.  So whenever I could, I took my glasses off.  When we went to the movies, I would put my glasses on so I could see the movie but took them off as soon as intermission started or as the movie was ending.  One night I had to go to the restroom during intermission.  As I neared the restroom door, just before opening it, a man came walking out.  Yes, my vision is that bad.  That was NOT the women’s restroom.  I learned my lesson and, by necessity, began to overcome my self-consciousness.  My glasses stayed on – until I got contact lenses.

Love should not be based on appearance.

ROAD TRIPS

As the years progressed, our infatuation grew into friendship, resulting in love.  Bill became my best friend and I, his.  We had so much fun together!

The beach was only an hour away and we went there often.  There is nothing like a carefree summer day, running along a sandy beach together, dodging the waves, then diving head first into a breaker, swimming out to the swells and floating on their gentle, rhythmic undulations.  Catching a big oncoming breaker to body surf to the shore, deftly evading the dreaded rip tides was always an adrenaline rush.

We would spend hours lying on the sand, basking in the sun, frying our bodies smeared with cocoa butter or baby oil, listening to our favorite music on “KFWB, Channel 98” on my little blue transistor radio.  My radio eventually got so much sand in it, the music sounded kind of, well, “sandy”.  And sunburns?  The more, the better!  By the end of summer we would proudly show off our copper tone tans, never realizing the business we were generating for the local dermatologists later in life.

One beautiful day as we were sunning ourselves at Zuma Beach, we began to have a craving for fresh strawberry pie.  The best strawberry pie we knew of was in San Bernardino, over 100 miles away.  So we hopped in the car, drove to San Bernardino and ate some pie.  Not wanting to go home the same way, we decided to drive through the mountains where we found a big patch of snow and had a snowball fight.

Another day we went to Calico Ghost Town near Barstow.  We finished there by 11 am.  It was too early to go home, so as we got out to the highway, the sign said, “Los Angeles 138 miles / Las Vegas 137 miles”.  Hmm, Las Vegas was closer.  Guess where we ended up?  We walked down Fremont Street in Las Vegas but were too young to go into the casinos, so we got back into Bill’s 1962 Ford Falcon Ranchero, filled up with gas and drove home.  It was getting late by the time we got to San Bernardino so we found a phone booth and called my parents.  I can only imagine how they must have felt when we told them we were on our way back from Las Vegas and would be home a little later!

A few months later we drove to Hearst Castle and went on a tour.  We enjoyed every minute of that wonderful place!  However we were done there early so decided to drive further up the coast all the way to Monterey.  Again, we wanted to go back a different way so we drove home by way of Salinas.  We drove about 700 miles that day – the beginning of a life-long love for road trip adventures together.

“LADYBUG”

I do have to tell you about my first “car”.  When I was a child my parents bought a 1949 Crosley Hot Shot (we called it “Hot Foot”).  It was a TINY, 2-seater car; however, we figured out how to fit all 4 of us in it.  My dad was in the driver’s seat; my mom was in the passenger’s seat.  My sister sat on the floor in front of my mom and I squeezed in-between my parents.  (Don’t worry, this was not our primary car.)  Over time, however, it broke down and just sat in our garage for years.

When I was just about to turn 16 Bill wheeled it out of the garage and got it running.  We painted it bright red, put big black polka dots on it and called it “Ladybug”.  Ladybug didn’t have a top, doors or windows.  Its windshield wipers weren’t coordinated, so whenever we turned them on, they would hit each other.  A moth had taken up residence on the speedometer, laid eggs and died so whenever I checked my speed, I had to look at a dead moth lying in the bottom of the speedometer and her ill-fated eggs covering the numbers.  Ladybug had a bad habit of dying in the middle of busy intersections during rush hour too.  I can’t count how many times I would have to jump out of the car and push it through the intersection to the safety of the nearest curb.

The first day I drove it to school, some boys lifted it up and put the front wheels over the parking lot divider.  When I came out of school to drive home, I had to ask some other guys to lift it up, back over the divider.  Ladybug was a popular topic of conversation around school after that.

Another day I was driving around with 2 of my girlfriends.  A policeman pulled me over and my heart did some flip-flops.  I asked him “What did I do wrong?” (I hoped he wouldn’t notice that there were 3 of us in a 2-seater car).  With a puzzled look on his face, he scratched his head and said, “I’m…not…quite…sure.”  After slowly walking around the car, scrutinizing each inch of this odd phenomenon he asked “Does this thing have doors?”  I said, “No.”  He said, “I’m not sure whether you need to have doors or not.  Go home and check your DMV book to see if a car needs them.”  And he drove away.  I breathed a sigh of relief, went home, and never read my DMV book.  I think he just wanted to check out this weird car.  I never got pulled over again (at least in that car – my MGA was a different story).

“MAXIMILLIAN PINKERTON”

My graduation gift was an adorable, spiffy turquoise 1957 MGA convertible.  Being a British car, we needed to name it a very British name.  So we decided on “Maximilian Pinkerton” (“Max” for short).  What fun we had in that car (and it didn’t stall in intersections and the windshield wipers actually worked in sync).  We often drove it to Zuma Beach through Malibu Canyon.  What fun it was to drive with the top down, the wind blowing through our hair, the car hugging every curve along that mountain road!

And as we drove, our infatuation gradually grew into a comfortable friendship and love.

LOVE KEEPS GROWING

Everything a flower needs and is destined to be lives within a tiny seed: its size, the shape of its leaves, the color of its flower – everything.  All it needs is to be planted in good soil, watered and fertilized and it will grow and blossom into its destiny.  Even after it has grown and blossomed, it still needs tender nurturing and occasionally, painful pruning to be healthy.

It takes time and the normal day-to-day stuff of life to grow love.  With every dinner, phone call, road trip and polka dot painted on Ladybug, that seed of love in our hearts grew.  It survived the tough times too, and gradually transformed from a fragile, painful self-conscious infatuation into a comfortable friendship:  a friendship where we were confident enough to be ourselves, knowing that we were loved, regardless of our appearance or behavior.  We could laugh together or be silent together.  It didn’t matter, as long as we were together.  Each moment nurtured that seed to grow into its designed destiny.

God is the gardener who planted the tiny seed of love in our hearts in 1961.  He has watered it, fertilized it and pruned it.  Even 58 years later, it’s still growing.  It looks very different now (it’s got a lot more wrinkles and scars) but it is still growing – and I know that God isn’t finished with us yet.

Growing Love is a life-long process.