Love Is Parading Around On the Stove

Love is parading around on the stove tonight Cooking beanie weanies for the likes of me. The smell makes me smile. And he makes me giddy. For fifty-five years I have been in love with this fifteen-year-old boy. He is grinning like a sailor who just fell off the back of a whale. He is seeing my dancing legs on the hood of his 1959 Pink Cadillac. Love has prevailed. Love is here. Love is now, love sweet love. Both dogs come running. The big and the little, the young and the old. They sense that Mommy and Daddy are about to hug, maybe kiss. Their radar is keen, and they want in on the action. Besides Daddy is standing next to the refrigerator. There might be a baloney treat in there somewhere for each. We are a family, a family. We’re a mommy and a daddy and a Buddy and a Sophie. How our lives have changed. We have three daughters and two sons-in-law, all lovely and fine. Shark, the cat, is somewhere, probably eating a headless mouse. But the one thing that never changes is love. Ten grandchildren have it, we have it, and the woods keeps it for us. It blows through the oaks and the willow. Flitters and flutters around us in the forms of wasp, cardinals and butterflies. For fifty-five years I have been in love with a fifteen-year-old boy.