âŚan unusual love story.
Referencing animals in the title sets an expectation Iâll be telling you a fable, and I suppose thatâs a fair description. After all, this story possesses both a lesson â actually, three of them â and the requisite animals, albeit two plaster animals.
My grandparents had an unusual love story. (Isnât that true of all grandparents?) I knew they met â and fell in love â because of their shared passion for ballroom dancing.
But, boy, oh, boy, were they ever the couple most likely to never get â or stay â together just by virtue of the âlacking things in commonâ department. Though they were evenly matched looks-wise â he with his dashing hat, manner, and astonishingly clear blue eyes – she with her fashionably flowing dresses, ready smile, and big brown, laughing eyes, they were not so much a âswipe right on Tinderâ kind of couple.
In fact, Iâm convinced the guy who conducted the 1950âs study on mate selection came up with âopposites attractâ after meeting my grandparents. Hereâs the short list of their non-overlap on the âole Venn diagram:
- He was a man of 10 words or less, while she was a woman who delighted in upbeat, back and forth conversations of 10 minutes or more.
- He didnât care for yards, yardwork, or words that had âyardâ in them, although he would sit in the yard listening to a ballgame. My Grammie was all about the yard, rendering that exquisite tiny plot of land gorgeous with flowers, a koi pond, and well-placed vintage lawn furniture that wasnât vintage at the time.
- He enjoyed a brisk business-like game of Blackjack, while she was devoted to her bridge clubs, enjoying all the social niceties they provided.
- When he got mad he was a communications camel who could go for weeks without uttering a single word, fully committing to his âstrong silent typeâ persona. She was gregarious, easy-going, and never met a positive word that shouldnât be uttered. When she got mad she would just sputter out, âOh, wouldnât that just frost you?â and go her truly merry way.
The funny thing is you meet your grandparents â if youâre lucky to meet them at all â in the twilight years of their life together. That means the lens through which we view their relationship may seem clear at the time, but itâs not 20/20. That was certainly the case with my own Grammie and Daddy.
Their journey as a couple unfolded, not in real time, but along the timeline that was my own emotional development, providing me with the ability to appreciate what it means to be in a long-term loving relationship. Granted, it can feel heavy on the âlong-term,â and not so much on the âlovingâ at times.
There were rough patches. Plenty. The grandparents I met later in life had survived wars, a head-on car crash when neither was expected to live, and the tough road a marriage travels when alcoholism is one of the not-so-restful-stops.
I didnât see much in the way of romance, except for one thing they did, but it spoke volumes. Their adorable and quirky expression of love that was re-ordering the cat and squirrel âlive actionâ statues on their backyard pole.
The cat and the squirrel were two plaster figurines my grandmother artfully arranged on the post behind their modest house. She would position these unlikely-to-be-paired-up critters, so the cat was chasing the squirrel.
For years, every so often – she never knew exactly when he would do it – my grandfather would switch the order. Sometimes he was near her when she discovered his antics, and I would hear her say, âOhhhhh, you!â as she turned toward him. The scene went into slow-mo. There wasnât any physical display, but what a moment. Precious. Authentic. Powerful.
The meaningful look they exchanged was so intensely personal, I remember feeling happy, but almost embarrassed. I felt as though Iâd photo bombed an intimate picture of their relationship.
These unforgettable interludes have stuck with me, becoming part of our familyâs lexicon. In fact, my husband and I will often say, âWell, itâs like the cat and the squirrel,â as though itâs some sort of parable that everyone knows. We know.
As it turns out my groom and I have several of our own cat-squirrel activities. One of these is when I carefully arrange dishes separately in the sink, lovingly squirting in the exact right amount of soap for a proper soaking, and he arrives a nanosecond later, dumping out the soapy water, and stacking the dishes all in one dry, towering pile.
I put down throw rugs, he picks them up. He pours cereal into a bowl, and I abscond with it, cackling as I hear him shuffling around, wondering where the flock he left it.
Weâve acted out these silly scenarios â plus several more â over the course of our triple+ decades together. Itâs these goofy moments when weâre alone that weâre exactly the same people together as we were the day we met back in 1980-something. And hereâs where those lessons I mentioned at the top of the article come in for a photo finish as to which of them represents the most important one.
Lesson One. It doesnât matter what a marriage or relationship looks like to those on the outside, or how others might apply their personal Litmus test assessing its success. The two people in it, define it.
Lesson Two. One of the most beautiful outcomes of a long-term relationship is you notice things, ensuring your significant someone knows theyâre seen, if not heard. (Kind of like what our parents told us when we were knee-high to a grasshopper.)
Lesson Three. Sharing emotional and physical space with someone to whom youâve plighted your troth means you share a non-verbal language thatâs often not spoken by anyone else.
For me, the strongest message of love is a non-verbal one, but I do need that cat-squirrel action to really send the message home. Hey, has anyone seen that bowl of granola I just poured?
Home. What an image that evokes. We often think of it as a physical structure; home ownership being an element of the American Dream to which many of us aspire.
Two Pieces of Advice: The holiday gifts for which you didnât ask.
Diane Dean-Epps, Writer 