New Year Thoughts on Love

Another year has arrived, and we're all caught up in this artifice of calendrical importance. I'm thinking about love.

Barbra sang it best, about people who need people, but sometimes one lives most of a life and there aren't people, at least in the sense of a spouse or children. There are almost always nieces and nephews, but love for them is too convenient, and conditional. I didn't really understand love, at least in its most sacred meaning to me, until I had children.

So wifey has an old dear friend who's turning 51 in a few months and never married. She's a good hearted woman, who, for a plethora of reasons that could fill a psychology major's doctoral dissertation, could never truly share her heart. So, 10 years ago, she got a dog, and the dog has acted as a child substitute.

Wifey convinced her friend several months ago that the dog ought to have a young puppy, to keep it youthful, and the friend went out and bought a new canine. It turns out that the new dog was too energetic and "needy" for apartment life, and the friend decided she had to give him away.

Wifey met a neighbor who mentioned that the family dog had died, and they wanted another, and the fix up was in! The problem is, and I saw this right away, that the family has 5 kids, the youngest of whom is only two, and the mother has a very full life. She's also Israeli, with her people's typical antipathy about foolishness and needless worry.

Well, the friend left the dog last weekend in a tearful goodbye, and, ever since the friend has called sounding positively suicidal. There are voicemails asking about anti depressants, and referrals to psychotherapists, and throaty weeping. It's awful.

Wifey called the new owner at the request of her friend, to see whether the adoptee was "happy." The Israeli acted as if wifey had asked if the refigerator was running well "I have 5 kids. There's a LOT going on in my house. The dog is fine. Why do you ask me this?"

Aside from the absurdity of this affair, and the cries of "Jesus Christ --get a freakin' life!" it points out again the deep human need to love and be loved. If it's not another human or humans, it's an animal.

I have a friend from NY who acted the same way about an enormous diabetic cat he had. This fellow, a grown man, didn't travel, despite professing his need to travel the world, for his reluctance to leave his cat alone. Mercifully, the cat died, and he met a human -- a wonderful lady who he loves and who loves him back. The two will remain childless, but are indeed travelling the world together, sans cats.

I like my dogs, but they're dogs to me. If my family was starving, I'd serve roast Bassett Hound and Labrador shish kabob without hesitation (but with a lot of seasoning).

Then again, I worry so much about my women that I'm sure it's taking years off my life, as my father's anxiety about us shortened his.

Love is so much of who we are, and I guess our need for it trumps all else.

Here's to a year of love, in whatever form it comes, to all.