Being in love requires true humility. Loving someone means that you show your vulnerability and reveal your imperfections. For someone like me that strives with great effort for perfection, admitting that I make mistakes only follows a very large and irritated sigh.
Loving well also takes commitment, even when the other person has a perennial runny nose or forgets to put the toilet seat down. Ugh. Maybe commitment is even more important than romance because, when your beloved gently comments that you’ve overcooked the halibut, the romance flies out the open window. He can’t even boil an egg.
I must be pretty humble because I truly am in love. I’m in love with the man with whom I’m sheltering-in-place.
I met Bob about seven years ago and fell in love with his picture on the dating website. There he was, dressed in short-sleeve shirt and dress trousers, a security clearance badge draped around his neck.
Oh, I’d met handsome guys—one, a tall sailor with a ruddy smile and thick, brown hair that rippled in the wind as we zig-zagged over the San Francisco Bay in his 32-foot sailboat. A less-tall jeweler who dressed impeccably and wore a gold chain around his neck. A dashing pilot who sensually danced the rumba. None of these, however, wore a security clearance badge.
What did that badge say to me? Intelligent. Trustworthy. You don’t get issued a badge like that if you’re a dunce or irresponsible. By standing in front of his assistant’s camera that day with his badge around his neck, this man passed Level 1 without me even meeting him. Not just smart—intelligent. Not just dependable—trustworthy.
He didn’t have much written on his profile, so I asked him to write about himself. He said, “No, let’s just meet and see if we like each other.”
Damn! I liked conducting preliminary research before investing actual time. Still, that badge shone like a golden ticket in his photo—beckoning me like a male siren.
Bob called me one weekday from work, and I was teaching class, so I couldn’t answer my phone. Later, I called him back. “He’s at his 3:00 meeting,” his assistant said cheerily. “May I tell him who is calling?”
“Tell him that Tess is returning his call,” I said, thinking that going to a meeting every day at 3:00 was ridiculous. What if no one had anything to discuss? What if the world was just perfect that day? Absurd.
“Oooooh, Tess,” the assistant crooned, with emphasis and elation, her voice lilting up and down like an alto singing in a musical.
Geez, they must gossip in his office. She knows my name already, and I haven’t even met him.
A few days later, I drove up to Black Angus Steakhouse at 5:20 p.m. I was early, so I sat in my car for nine minutes, smoothing out my polka-dot sleeveless blouse and navy tiered, knee-length skirt that swished as I walked. My makeup was perfect. My hair was brushed and shining. I was ready for this.
When I walked in the door, Bob was sitting in the restaurant’s lobby, and he looked up expectantly. Mm, I met his expectations apparently.
We sat in the small bar at the first high table. I ordered Chardonnay, and Bob ordered a dry martini with a twist of lemon, up! A hard liquor type, I thought. Old-fashioned.
I had memorized my first-date checklist, so I expertly chatted about some fluffy topics while weaving in my questions. He seemed shy, but got more social after he had downed half of his martini.
“Where do you live?”
“Pleasanton, a great town.”
“Where do you work?”
“Lawrence Livermore Lab.” I had guessed that. You see, I had dated another guy that had worked at the lab, years ago. I also once had worked at Lockheed Martin and had proudly worn my own security clearance badge. I knew Lawrence Livermore Lab was the only government facility in the lower East Bay.
“Enchanted,” I said.
I finished my glass of wine over the next forty-five minutes, and was focusing on how to end the night, but also to ensure a call for future action.
“Would you like to have dinner?” Bob asked.
We both ordered the salmon that night and took that as a sign of compatibility, and we spent the next seven years cleaning out the baggage in his life and hiding mine pretty well. At first, he didn’t know what baggage was, but once we agreed that our lives were knitted together permanently, he called up the “Got Junk” people and they took it all away. All of it. Wow. By that time, I had cleaned out my hidden baggage too, or at least sent its energy into outer space.
Last April 6th, Bob and I married each other at Peace Lutheran Church, a small but beautiful dwelling set upon a wooded property. Our family and friends came to celebrate our late-in-life blooming love.
They recited prayers and rang the chimes as we exchanged our vows, and now we live together in my 1950 square-foot, two-story house in a charming neighborhood. We take walks, go out to dinner, stroll nearby beaches, read books, learn Spanish, and watch movies—all together.
Life was going along swimmingly until recently. After we got married, we took an Eastern European cruise on the Danube from Budapest to Prague, through Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. This was Bob’s first trip to Europe (amazing) and my first trip to Eastern Europe. I especially loved seeing Czechoslovakia since I am part Bohemian and proud of this wild heritage.
In January, we just finished planning this summer’s trek to Italy and Slovenia. Oops. Poor timing for going to see Pope Francis who is holed up by his lonesome in St. Peter’s Square. Even Slovenia has been hit by the Corona Virus, but Italy has been devastated.
Now, our first anniversary is coming up on April 6th, and, according to the news reports, we still will be sheltering-in-place. No going out to our favorite Bridges Restaurant. No visiting our favorite beach town, Pacific Grove. No wine tasting in Napa, Sonoma, Livermore, or Paso Robles. Nada, but sheltering-in-place.
I suggested that we celebrate by having a ceremony at home. Bob couldn’t imagine what kind of ceremony we could have without an official coming by.
“We don’t need an official,” I said. “Nobody helped us fall in love, so we don’t need anybody to help us celebrate our first anniversary.”
He agreed pensively. Maybe he needed an official more than I thought–maybe he was thinking about that life coach that he had hired to teach him how to date. I hope he didn’t pay her too much.
“What to do?” I queried. “I know, you could teach me how to dance,” I chirped.
“You could teach me,” he said. “I’m no dancer.”
I laughed, but then got serious inside. Why would I want Bob to change the way he dances? When he puts his long, strong arms around me and shuffles around with a miniscule rhythm in his hips, I’m in heaven. Any dance step that I would show him would require us to pull out of that pose of perfect bliss where I feel loved, cherished, and wanted.
No dance lessons. He’s a perfect dancer already.
Ever since before we were married, I’ve been asking Bob to write me a love letter. I have a little ceramic box in my living room with an angel perched on its lid. Inside the box is enough space to store a love letter, and it’s empty now.
“I’m no writer,” Bob’s always declares.
I think it’s true that the more you advertise a product, the more likely you are to sell it. Don’t just advertise your decorated rocks on Facebook one time–show them a hundred times, and someone will buy one. I must have done a good job of selling my idea about this love letter because this is what Bob said next. “I’m not exactly a strong writer.”
“But, you’re the perfect love-letter writer for me,” I responded. I can be charming sometimes.
“Ok, I’ll try,” he said from his arm chair, his hands holding his coffee cup like it was a vanilla ice cream sandwich made with chocolate chip cookie wafers. One side of his mouth turned up like a bad-boy grin underneath his neatly-trimmed gray and dark mustache. Dervishly handsome he is.
So, we’ve agreed. For our first anniversary, we are going to write each other love letters. I’m a writer, but I know when I start writing mine, I’m going to feel vulnerable and shy.
What I can do to build my confidence?
I have the advantage that the object of my love, now retired, once was trusted enough to be issued a top security clearance badge. If Lawrence Livermore Lab could trust Bob with its secrets, then I can trust him with my heart.
I’ll take out that picture of Bob from the dating website and focus on the badge.
Tess Perko's Blog 