Love, love me do
Here’s the scene: It is February 14, about 1,524 years ago. Roman men, naked and stupid drunk on wine, have sacrificed a goat and a dog, and are busy whipping women with the hides of the animals they have just slain. The young women line up for the men to hit them, believing (that is, being told) this will make them fertile.
Following this “festival,” the men draw the names of women from a jar, and coupling begins.
Yes, this is the origin of this day, the day your sweetheart sends you flowers. (Best keep an eye on your goats and dogs.)
Or perhaps you prefer this earlier origin story: On February 14, 269 Emperor Claudius II executed a clergyman—a priest or a bishop, at any rate a heretic—whose name was Valentine. Some 200 years later Pope Gelasius proclaimed him a martyr and set aside the 14th of February to honor him. (There was another executed/ martyred Valentine…a double murder across a few centuries.)
So light a candle, snuggle up, love the one you’re with.
Because, regardless of the whipping with animal skins and the beheadings and the Hallmarkization of romance, love is what we’ve got, what we need, what keeps us whole.
The psychologist Harry Harlow suggested back in 1958 that "so far as love or affection is concerned, psychologists have failed in their mission. The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation, and the little we write about it has been written better by poets…”
And so, I offer this poetry.
How Do I Love Thee?
Elizabeth Barret Browning, Sonnet 43
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
And then, of course, this final stanza from Mary Oliver’s poem,
In Blackwater Woods
To live in this world
You must be able
To do three things:
To love what is mortal;
To hold it
Against your bones
Knowing
Your own life depends on it;
And, when the time comes to let it go,
To let it go.
And I would add: To welcome it back. To let it in.