A while ago I penned a series of small poems with the working title Thirty Ages of Love. Thirty poems, each reflecting a flavor of love that exists at a particular time of life. The first, called New, goes

I opened my eyes
And saw your face
Your smile was the sky
I took a whole day
To reach up
And touch your lips

It reflects the kind of open love that must exist between a new-born infant and its mother—where the physical, sensual, emotional, and spiritual all meld into common sensation.

At the other end of life’s spectrum is:

Ninety

Lean against me, hon
The sun is bright
And your warm skin
Is all I need

I hear a song
I need not name
You already sing it
With your eyes

Technically, I haven’t reached this one, though I have experienced the other twenty-nine. Clearly the love of a nonagenarian is more focused, but in many ways quite similar to the New, cherishing the immediate moment of communing with the heat of another human, or in many cases, a non-human.

These Last Quarter years are, for many, perhaps most of us, not filled with the urgency, the near sensory overload of the early and middle journey.

Twenty

Not her hair
Or her legs
Not even her laugh which kind of
Goes low at the end
But when she looked up
With a plate of potato salad
We recognized each other
For the very first time.

But they can also be gracefully free of the ‘distractions’ of the Age Of Responsibility.

Fifty

Where did you go?
I waited, hoping,
Knowing only we could meet
On this rare date
When you are free
We were so close
And then you got that look
I stomped
I spit
I struck the wall
I dropped my clothes and danced

Finally
You smiled

The physicality may require more patience. It is rooted in a reality that can include disappointment, pain, sadness. Yes, it can include deep yearning for those, over the hill, under the ground, or beyond the reach of words.

We often have to make love, not in the sense of making the beast with two backs, but rather in creating connection much in the way one would create a work of art, a crafted meal, this carefully worded message. We also have the privilege of spreading our love out to more of the world; putting no requirements on it; making it the gift we give even the frightening, or the dark moments because they build the full flavor of existence.

When do we bring sisu into love? Sisu, that energy that we can bring to bear when some effort seems too much. We meet this often in the Last Quarter because the world we built was made, by us, for stronger folks than we are now. And love does take some strength. Rolling over and giving your love a kiss can take real effort and deliberate forgetting of a jab of pain. Showing care; bringing a gift can mean remembering, when recall refuses to appear.

And there is a challenge to love that I may be unable to see—the deep need to love myself when the mirror scares me, the gifts I have made for the world are long forgotten, the touch I offer offers little allure. Love can be the magic penny that keeps on giving after it is given. The key to that wealth is to invest in yourself, perhaps modestly, over the years.

In each of these ages of love, each time we have an opportunity to give full throated love to others, we can best begin with deep, caring and forgiving love for ourselves…with all our fleas, not after we have made ourselves okay, but now. We get to be lovable, even when we are wounded. But if we come to another person hollow, desperately wishing to be filled with love, we are in danger of drowning them with our emptiness.

Love is not so much something you feel as something you do. It is rooted in caring; and the person to care for most deeply is yourself, not so much as a celebration of your ego; more a deep cherishing of that child that has grown within you and needs the best nurturing to give back to the world.

So today, Valentine’s Day, is a good day to start. Allow yourself to fall deeply in love with yourself.