“Love is in the air…”

It’s Springtime…. and Love is in the air…!  It’s actually ALWAYS in the air,   but we aren’t ever-present to it… It’s nice when we can really listen and hear the message that it’s there, it’s alive, and it’s for everyone….

My friend, Janey, was walking in Soho the other day – and she couldn’t help but hear a couple talking behind her… mostly the man…

Man: “I love you so much, I just want everyone to know…!”

Janey heard sounds of giggling and kissing….

Man: “I want to rent a store down here and put a sign in the window so everyone can see it, ‘I love my wife so much!’”

More smooching noises….

Janey couldn’t contain herself anymore.  She turned around and said to them, “I didn’t mean to be nosy, but I couldn’t help but overhear you and I just want you to know what a wonderful thing that was for me to hear on the street today… There should be more conversations like that in the world every day!”

That conversation lit up Janey’s day… When she told me about it, it lit up my day as well….

It’s amazing what love can do…

It made me think of how we can be present to love in all its astounding revelations…   I remembered something that happened a few months ago that made me realize how much I would like to have true love in my own life…

I watch late night talk shows – my favorites are David Letterman and, right after him, Craig Ferguson.   To me, Craig is the “thinking man’s late night talk show host” – he’s incredibly funny AND there have been times when he has also been eloquent and serious — often about his own sobriety and who he’ll make fun of and who he won’t… I like that kind of integrity in my funny men…

Once, Craig had a show with guest Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which lifted my spirits and made me smile for days afterwards… I laughed right along with how jocular and playful he was – I had always thought of Father Tutu as so serious before that night… It was lovely to see him interact with Craig in such a light-hearted way…

And…

For a very long time, I must have been holding it that there was this little “late night singles” thing going on here…   David Letterman only recently married his girlfriend of 23 years and with whom he has a five-year-old son, and Craig wasn’t married and never spoke of a girlfriend or about his personal romantic life at all….

And, of course, me…

In December, Craig’s mother died. He opened his show that night with the caveat that it would not be “comedy as usual” – that night was devoted to his mother and that’s what he would be talking about…

I was drawn, mesmerized, by stories of his mother and the funeral and the beautiful piece that he read from Victor Hugo’s “Toilers of the Sea” and how he finally ended the show with his mother’s favorite song – a song that he admitted was awful,  a calypso version of “Rivers of Babylon” by Boney M,   but that was her favorite song and that’s how we were going out that night….

And, yes, it IS a dreadful song….

I sat there with tears in my eyes as I listened to it….

Craig’s obvious grief stayed with me over the next few days… I found myself offering up my prayers for him… “Please take care of him, God… he seems so alone….”

After New Year’s, Craig returned from vacation – I knew it was vacation because it was two weeks of reruns – and the first image on the screen at the beginning of the show was Craig’s left hand – WITH A WEDDING RING ON HIS THIRD FINGER!

Yes!  Craig Ferguson had gotten married!   This show was upbeat and happy and full of possibility and joy!  He spoke of his new wife, Megan, and showed pictures of his wedding… a gorgeous picture at night in the snow in Vermont… Craig in a kilt (and joking about THAT all night, how the cold Vermont air and the deep snow took it’s toll on his traditional kilt-wearing…) and Megan in a white princess coat and muff…

I was so happy for him… sitting alone on my white couch in my living room….

At the end of each show, Craig puts his feet up on the desk and usually does a little “bit” on “What did we learn on the show tonight, Craig?”   That night, it was cute and sweet and about his wife and how he loves her and how he can’t flirt anymore on the show… “but if we ever get George Clooney on this stage, all bets are off…”

He ended it with…

“Put the kettle up, Megan, I’ll soon be home…”

I was suddenly moved…. what he said and the way he said it was so intimate and loving and …

I knew that I wanted that for myself…

Perhaps soon, one of you will be walking up the street and you’ll hear a couple behind you talking and giggling and smooching… and the man will be saying, “I always wanted to love a little red-haired girl like the one in Charlie Brown and now I have you…. “

And, you’ll turn around… and I’ll wink at you…

Deliciously yours in the Joy of it All, Linda

A few people have written to me  requesting the piece  from “Toilers of the Sea” that Craig Ferguson read on his show to celebrate his mother’s death.  I didn’t put it here because this was mean to be a happy story; however, it is a beautiful passage and so I offer it here for you:

“I am standing upon that fore shore.  A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.  She’s an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs as a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. 

Then, someone at my side says, “There, she’s gone.”  “Gone where?”  Gone from my sight, that’s all. 

She is just as large in mast and spar and hull as ever she was when she left my sight, just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination. 

Her diminished size is in me, not in her.  And, just at that moment, when someone at  MY side says, “There, she’s gone,” there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout,  ‘Here she comes!’ 

…and that is dying.”              

 From, “The Toilers of the Sea,” by Victor Hugo

 © Linda Ruocco and “Spiritual Chocolate”, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Linda Ruocco and “Spritiual Chocolate”  with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  Thank you.