Ripples of Love

Sometimes love comes quietly without a fireworks show. Sometimes it is in the silence, in the normalcy and in the peacefulness that we fall in love. Yet, most of us don't even realize it as we wait for the big ka-bang.

We can see the grandest passion as the ocean, a whirlwind of crashing waves and exotic creatures or we can realize that sometimes love is the quiet of a gentle ripple on a lake. Both can make you seasick if you are floating long enough. The whole point of it is, is that we need to anchor somewhere. We cannot float forever. We hope we don't float forever drifting aimlessly while we wait for the tide to sweep us away into the fantasy we create in our own minds. We need to stop in our quest of only searching for the wildest turbulent emotion to tell us we have love in our life.

I want the quiet lake now. I want the sun setting in the same spot. I want to know that the waves won't erode me or wash me away in a current of feeling-feelings that can last moments or even a lifetime. I want the constancy, the ever changing, shifting but without worrying there is a shark waiting to bite my leg off.

I am not knocking passion. I love passion. I am filled with passion. I just have realized that I can be blinded by my own passions as well as others. I do not want to live without any type of passion I just do not need it to fuel the person I am so much anymore. I don't need to have my heart skip beats every time I see someone to find the value in them anymore as my potential mate. And it is quite strange really; as I get older the things that make my heart fill are so very different than they used to be.

It used to be a handsome man would cause me a bit of dizziness and now-a man treating me kindly and as if I were someone precious, causes me the same dizziness. It used to be that the sparkle and flash of a man's eyes would make me blush and now, a man looking in my eyes and listening-hearing what I am saying, causes the heat to creep to my cheeks. It is strange how much more beautiful all men have become to me as I let the notions of Adonis fall away.

I am not saying if you find someone physically repulsive that the thought of that would change. I am saying that there are so many more things that make a man handsome and set our hearts beating. It is easier for me to focus on his warm eyes, rather than the little beer belly-especially when he is looking at me as if I were the best thing that ever happened to him. It is easier to hold all sorts of different hands when they are holding mine with tenderness and knowing I may be as safely held in his heart. There is a comfort that is not unpleasant to hear a voice that has a slight lift to it when he says my name.

These are not huge things. These are not things that set bombs off all around me. Yet, they are things I want-the things that have no monetary value at all yet are priceless to me.

So many men are under the misguided assumption that women want it all-we want the house, the two point five kids, the two karat diamond, the social status etc. These things are all nice but that is all they are-they are nice things.

I want more. I want to watch the ripples on the lake and know that when I am growing old, there will still be ripples, different ripples-but the sun will set in the same spot every night. And I want to know there will be someone wanting to watch the sun setting in the same spot every night with me, holding my hand as well as my heart.

Monika M. Basile