Living on love is worth every dime

Another Valentine’s Day has come and gone and once again I find myself surrounded by my wife and children and memories of my money. They’re good memories. It was money well spent. Who knows, if I hadn’t spent it on Valentine’s Day I just might be surrounded by my money with memories of my wife and children. Seriously though, I doubt my wife would leave me if I got stingy on Feb. 14. She might make Feb. 15 incredibly unbearable, but she’d still be mine. That is, I think she would, right Sweetheart? Sweetheart? Uh, let me get back to you on that. I was listening to KSBJ radio earlier this week, and they were playing a version of the old Newlywed Game where they pit newlyweds against “oldieweds.” That got me thinking about how well married couples know (or don’t know) each other. That was compounded when I took Sandy to see “The Vow” at the movie theater. It’s the story about a young husband who has to win back the love of his wife after a car crash erases all her memory of him and their life together. Her life was so different before they met that it was almost as if she had led a double life. A lot of things have been going through my mind as I’ve listened to the questions and watched the movie. How would I have answered some of those questions on the radio? How would Sandy have answered the ones about me? I like to think that I know my wife as well as she knows herself. I also like to think that I’m a multi-millionaire with a big, fancy home, nice cars and servants, but that’s beside the point. I learned a few years ago when I first joined Facebook that I apparently didn’t know my wife as well as I thought. There was a game where you asked your friends to answer questions about yourself to see how well they know you. It turns out that I knew my ex-wife much better than my wife. Now my ex-wife is my ex-friend on Facebook. We’re still friends in real life, but my focus has shifted to knowing and understanding my wife better. I’ve learned, for example, that women are moving targets. Once you think you’ve got them figured out, they change everything. It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind and the expectation of the man to know when it changes and what it has changed to. For example, if her favorite ice cream is Death By Chocolate, the man must automatically know the next time they’re at the ice cream parlor that he should order her the Mocha Mint because that has always been her favorite. There are some questions women ask that have very obvious answers. “Does this (insert name of garment here) make my butt look big?” The answer is always “no.” The same answer applies when she asks you if another woman in the room looks pretty. Most of us guys, however, often have the mouth in motion before the brain can intercede because the brain is too busy noticing how much prettier the other girl would be if her butt wasn’t so big. Interestingly enough, I used to have this dream long ago where I would wake up in the hospital and not recognize my wife and sons and thinking I was still married to my daughter’s mother. How would my wife and boys take it? How would I handle it? I never did find out and in all honesty, I don’t want to know. I love my wife and children dearly, and don’t think they could ever escape my memory because they are so thoroughly engrained in it. Life without them would scarcely be worth living. If there is anything I’ve learned in all my years it’s that there is nothing more important in this world than love. When Jesus was asked what the most important part of the law was, he summed up the Commandments into two parts: love God and love your neighbor. The common thread is love. I’ve also learned that love is not an emotion or feeling but a choice and a commitment. Love doesn’t quit. People quit, but real love does not. Love is what carries us through the highs and lows of life. As the late columnist John Coit once wrote, “Life is short and it hurts. Love is the only drug that works.” It is because of love and commitment that the saying is true: Real fathers have pictures of their family where their money used to be. In all honesty, I’d rather have the love and a lifetime of memories of my wife and children than my last dime. In the end when all is said and done, I can only take one of those things with me when I pass away. I think that’s what Jesus meant when he instructed us to store up treasure in Heaven.