On a recent afternoon, after I had said my goodbyes to co-workers at the Y, I headed out the back door and up the steep concrete steps leading to the alley. Ahead of me was a retired couple. They stopped climbing and stepped aside to allow me to pass. “We have bad knees,” the woman said. “It’s gonna take us a while!”
“Oh, my knees have their bad days, too,” I replied.
We reached the alley together, more or less. The man told me, as he linked arms with his wife, “Yep, I have a bum left knee, and she has a bad one on the right!”
“Well, you two ought to sign up for a three-legged race. You’d do great!” I joked. We all laughed. We parted ways and I could hear them giggling and chatting as they shuffled to their car.
My guess is that this charming couple had been together for decades, likely their entire adult lives. They moved and talked together with ease, anticipating the other’s words and movements like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on the dance floor. I’ll bet their feet had danced together countless times, nimbly prancing, weaving in a complicated pattern upon many-a-dance-floor. And now, in their golden years they lean on one another, just a little, with their bad knees in the middle.
If we are lucky, we all have somebody in our life that we share this connection with. Somebody who knows what you are thinking without hearing the words. They recognize a look in the eye or a gesture that tells all. And because they know, they react predictably and the dance of life continues.
My sister once described my husband and I as using the Vulcan Mind-Meld to communicate. For those of you who didn’t grow up in the 70s when, in my family, we marked time in Star Trek episodes, the Mind Meld is a technique for sharing thoughts, experiences, memories, and knowledge with another person (or alien). The VMM is a form of telepathy that usually required physical contact. From the beginning of our time together, we have shared this connection with only a few hiccups along the way.
If we are super-fortunate, we have more than one kind of partner in life. The most typical partnership is initiated by romance and results in love, but often this connection exists through family ties or platonic friendships. You know each other so well that you don’t have to explain yourself. My sisters and I have an extensive vocabulary and plenty of silly phrases that would sound like a foreign language to an outsider. My daughters and I have simple gestures that will send each other into belly-laughs. There are some long-running themes among my running group (pun intended) that, although we cannot speak of them in the company of others without blushing, can be alluded to with one single letter.
I think of all of these things on this red-heart emblazoned holiday, this day of love. I have never been a believer in the obligation to buy roses and chocolates to express my affection. I don’t expect a romantic dinner during which we gaze at each other under the light of twinkling candlelight. I feel like love and appreciation should be understood every day of the year.
Beyond February 14th my husband and I will continue to put our foreheads together for the Vulcan Mind Meld if we are lucky. We will tie our ankles together with an old rag, his left to my right, and continue trudging through this crazy life in our own personal three-legged race.
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