by Colleen Sell
“What?” he gasped, pulling me in for a big hug, “Don’t you get it? I would rather be anywhere that you are.”
I hugged him fervently, clinging desperately as I realized that time was slipping away from us. “It’s going to be so hard to leave you.”
“Let’s not think about that now.”
But inevitably, my last night arrived. I had thought of every way possible to extend my stay, to no avail. I had to leave. My family and the new school year were waiting for me back in Canada. I had no choice but to leave.
For the first time since I’d arrived in Italy, the rain began to fall over the quiet, quaint town.
“I feel like my heart is breaking,” I told Ludovico, tears threatening to spill down my cheeks.
We were sitting in his small hatchback, parked in the piazza, listening to his favorite music CD. The yellow glow of the street lamps cast a sad shadow on the desolate, wet streets.
“I know,” he sighed. “I’ve never felt this way before.”
I blinked. Was I hearing him correctly? I hadn’t wanted to let myself believe that he could feel as strongly as I did.
“Neither have I,” I admitted.
“I . . .” He reached out and took my hand, a pained look in his eyes. “I’m in love with you.”
“This is crazy.” My tears spilled over. “We hardly know each other, but I’m pretty sure — ”
“Yes?” He inched closer.
“ — I love you too,” I continued through sobs.
Saying goodbye to Ludovico was one of the most painful moments of my life.
“Please, promise me you’ll come back soon,” he implored. “You must!”
“I will,” I was adamant, “at the end of the year.”
It was September. How I thought I could make it back to see Ludovico in only three short months, I don’t know, but we swore that our love for one another was real and we would be together soon.
I cried for weeks when I got back to Toronto. My parents didn’t know what to do with me. They tried to make me see that I couldn’t very well pursue a future with a boy that far away, not while I still had my schooling to finish. Besides, they said, I was too young.
I cried until I had no more tears to shed. As the months and then the years passed, it became clear that I would not be returning to Italy anytime soon. Although the pain of missing Ludovico never went away, I pushed it to the back of my heart and continued living my life. I dated other boys, but I never gave my heart away completely.
Ten years later, I realized why.
“Do you remember Ludovico?” my mom asked me casually one morning as I poured a cup of coffee. “He is here visiting, and there will be a party for him at my cousin’s place tomorrow night.”
My heart skipped a beat. My first love was here? A million conflicting emotions raced through my mind. Would he even remember me? Had he found someone else to share his passion with? I didn’t think I could endure the embarrassment and disappointment of seeing him with another girl. Though ten years had passed and I’d moved on with my life and forced myself to forget Ludovico, I still had feelings for him. And the thought of seeing him again and not having those feelings reciprocated was more than I could bear.
“Mom, I’m not sure if I can — ”
My mother’s warning glance stopped me in my tracks. I knew what she was going to say, that it would be rude of me not to go.
“Okay, I’ll be there,” I acquiesced.
The next night, I said a few polite hellos as I removed my coat, my heart racing with anticipation. I had barely stepped inside when I felt his presence. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck as I glanced across the room at the man I had once declared my eternal devotion to. He stared right back at me, his gaze unreadable. We both broke the connection, hastily looking away. For the next two hours, we avoided each other awkwardly, careful not to glance in the other’s direction.
Wanting to retrieve my sweater from the closet, I turned down the corridor into the small front hallway. I was shocked to bang straight into Ludovico.
“Oh, hi.” I smiled meekly, nervously tucking my hair behind my ear.
“Hi.”
“How are you?” I sounded breathless, even to my own ears, “It’s been such a long time.”
“I know. It has.” His tone was serious. “I’ve been good. How about you?”
“Good.”
The silence was deafening.
“So ten years since you came to Italy?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I remember it like it was yesterday.”
I searched his dark eyes, surprised by his words. “I do, too.”
Leaning forward, he whispered in my ear, “Nothing’s changed for me, Sylvia. I still feel exactly the same.”
I closed my eyes, taking in the familiar scent of him. “I do, too.”
He pulled me into his arms. “This is ridiculous. I don’t want to wait another ten years to see you again.”
“I know. But how?”
“I have a few more days here, and then we have to see what we can do about this situation.”
His lips lightly grazed against my cheek, and I felt shivers down every nerve in my body. This man was my destiny; I knew it.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“And I love you.”
I was so excited I could barely make sense of it all. Ludovico was moving to Canada!
It had been a year and a half since we had been reunited — a challenging stretch of long-distance love. Now, he had sent me a ticket to join him in Italy so I help him pack and get organized. We would leave together to begin a new life in my world.
“Can you believe it’s finally here?” he embraced me at the airport enthusiastically.
“I can’t!” I giggled with excitement. “It’s too good to be true.”
It was amazing to be together while we scrambled to take care of the many loose ends involved in moving to a different country, but a nagging feeling tugged at my gut. Ludovico would have to say goodbye to everyone — including his ill father — and leave them thousands of miles away . . . for me. Guilt chewed at my insides.
Faces around us were drawn with tension as the final day drew nearer. And then it came: the goodbye.
It was four in the morning on the day of our departure. The night wind whirled eerily in through the open balcony window. Ludovico’s mother placed two cups of coffee on the kitchen table and then burst into tears.
“Don’t cry, Ma. It’s okay,” he comforted, embracing the tiny woman as she sobbed.
Then he hugged his father, who whispered, “Don’t turn around. Just go.”
Tears rolled down my face as I realized what Ludovico was giving up for me, the enormity of his sacrifice and pure love.
It poured rain in Rome that day. Our flight was delayed, and we spent endless hours watching the water pour down the walls in sheets. The sky had never been grayer.
“I’m sorry you have to go through this,” I cried.
“No,” his voice was laced with sadness. “Don’t be. It’s just a difficult moment, but this is what I want. I love you.”
And just like that, I learned the true meaning of what it meant to love someone. Love isn’t only roses, kisses, and poetry. It isn’t only sunny days. True love is also sacrifice, compromise, and selflessness. It is storms weathered together.
Six years later, Ludovico and I are happily married with a beautiful baby girl, and we continue to face each storm as it comes our way — hand in hand, heart to heart.
— Sylvia Suriano-Diodati
Retiring Bill Pullman
Over the years I’ve had a low-simmering but perpetual fear of being the Bill Pullman character in my romantic life. For those who don’t share this obsession, Bill Pullman is an actor who appeared in a string of 1990s date movies, usually as the guy who doesn’t get the girl. Pullman’s characters are nice but tend to lack the romantic zing needed to make a woman’s heart skip a beat.
In S
ingles, he’s the plastic surgeon who tells Bridget Fonda she doesn’t need bigger breasts, which empowers her to win back the boyfriend who said she did. In Sleepless in Seattle, he’s the dull fiancé who Meg Ryan dumps on Valentine’s Day so she can pursue a complete stranger. Pullman’s date-movie credentials are so entrenched in my psyche that when he showed up as the U.S. president in Independence Day, I kept waiting for the First Lady to find someone new. Instead, she died.
Throughout most of our twelve years together, I worried my wife would wake up and realize she’d married her own personal Bill Pullman. As soon as that happened, someone more glamorous would show up to whisk her away. It’s a shallow fear and a shallower way to view my wife’s affections, but knowing that didn’t stop me from feeling it.
Around the same time I first fell in love with my wife, I began to understand I was not her type at all. She preferred sinewy tall men who lived to climb mountain peaks and paddle rapids. I was chubby, short, and hadn’t climbed a mountain in my life. But she fell for me because of the strangeness of chemistry and because I made her laugh, was kind to her, and shared my sugary cereal with her between classes. (Never underestimate the power of sugar rushes in a relationship; I think my wife accepted my marriage proposal partly because she had just consumed some really good chocolate.)
Still, even after we became engaged, I worried she would discover my inner Bill Pullman. It was enough to cause panic attacks whenever she suggested we go camping or for a canoe ride. At last, she would see how incompetent I was at such outdoorsy things and fall for whichever rugged guide came out to save us after our canoe tipped!
When it was just the two of us, there was enough time and space for her to talk me down, but now that we have a daughter, my wife has a shorter supply of patience for such idiosyncrasies. Her impatience was enough to make me fear for the worst. The first two years of parenthood are hard on a marriage, and it isn’t a great time to indulge in insecurities about a relationship. Sleep deprivation heightens paranoia, and trying to have a conversation with your spouse when your baby is awake is like trying to talk to her from across a crowded subway platform. But now our daughter is old enough to play by herself for a minute or two, and she’ll even let us get a word in edgewise, so my wife and I are slowly rediscovering each other.
As parents, if we’re lucky, we lose a little of our emotional baggage during our first child’s infancy (which is a good thing, because whatever remains hangs like a millstone around our necks). Moping because of an imagined slight or angst over one’s career becomes inexpedient when it takes half of a precious nap. There simply isn’t enough time, and we decide to drop certain facades of our personality that we no longer find useful.
Taking stock as my daughter’s infancy was winding down, I was surprised to discover that I’d left Bill Pullman somewhere along the side of the road. It probably happened gradually each day, as I received a grateful look from my wife whenever I handed her a bowl of soup or a look of relief from her whenever I walked in the door. Once a child comes into the picture, the stakes are raised in a marriage. We no longer look for Mr. or Ms. Right at a time when we are only desperate for Mr. or Ms. Could You Please Hand Me a Diaper and Make Me a Cup of Tea.
An aging actor once said that as we get older, competence increasingly becomes a turn-on. When thinking about marriage, I would replace competence with kindness. For if attraction is the spark that ignites love, it is a thousand daily kindnesses that keep love’s flame alive.
Incidentally, I found a recent picture of Bill Pullman on the Internet while writing this essay. He looks older, balder, and fatter. Then again, so does Tom Hanks.
— Craig Idlebrook
This story was first published in Funny Times, September 2008.
Love and the Un-Romantic
“When were we last romantic?” I ask my husband.
“Huh?”
“You know, when was our last romantic moment?”
He ponders the question, laughs, and then takes a sip of Gatorade from the gallon-sized container in the fridge.
I’ve been mulling over our twenty-two years of marriage and have yet to come up with a romantic memory. But now I’m determined to because I cannot believe that, in all these years, nothing comes to mind. So I say to myself, Think, Mary. Think.
I start with our honeymoon. We had decided to pass on the beaches of St. Thomas and the mountains of the Poconos and instead chose to head for Nashville. We were both gigging musicians, and the sound of “Music City, U.S.A.” tickled our ears.
I had bought a red, floral party dress at a vintage thrift shop a few weeks prior to the big day, and I was exuberant and all a-fluff at the airport. We were on our way! But soon I was wincing as I crammed all that lovely red taffeta under my seatbelt on the flight to Tennessee. Fashion maven Betsy Johnson would have been in tears had she seen the wrinkled mess I had become when I walked off the plane. By the time we got to the baggage claim, my feet hurt so much that I scrapped my patent leather shoes for a pair of sneakers before we made our way to a nearby motel.
Tired from the day’s excitement and long trip, we decided to stay in for the night and just order a pizza. And, frankly, we were perfectly happy with that.
The rest of our honeymoon was filled with many happy moments, but none that I remember as being truly romantic. Guitar shopping? Our day at the Carl Perkins Railroad Museum? Buying those Elvis mugs we just had to have at Graceland? I know for sure that driving over the Memphis–Arkansas Memorial Bridge — just so we could shout, “We’re in Arkansas!” out the window of the car — would not be considered textbook romance. Inane. Memorable. Maybe even adorable. But romantic? Not even.
My husband and I are in love, no doubt. Crazy about each other. Two peas in a pod. But truly romantic moments of the traditional variety? None come to mind.
On Valentine’s Day we go to our favorite family-run Mexican restaurant and order our no-fail combo plates (number thirteen for him; number seven for me) as our son dips tortilla chips into the salsa and uses his finger to flick the onions back into the dipping bowl.
On each of my birthdays, my husband usually asks, “So what are we doing for your birthday?” — as in “I didn’t make any plans.” A trip to the bakery for a cake ensues, and I call in the troops for a slice. The cake, as usual, is adorned with “the” candle, a tacky wax mold of the words “Happy Birthday” that has been in my husband’s family longer than I have.
I would be remiss if I were to claim that this lack of romantic aptitude is one-sided, all my husband’s doing. It is not. I admit that I can’t stomach romance novels, that I had a hard time getting through Pride and Prejudice, and that I’d cringe if my husband offered me jewelry that bore any semblance to the shape of a heart. (I happily accept, however, any such gifts from my young son.)
Still searching my memory for at least one romantic moment between my husband and me, I think about the time we bought our first — and only — home. Buying your first home would definitely be considered a major romantic event by most young couples. After all, it’s a huge (and scary) new step in your coupled life. It’s the largest expense you’ll ever make together. And it’s a major commitment to one another. A home of your own! Where you’ll live together and grow old together and maybe even raise kids together. Where you’ll have the wild freedom to paint your walls any ghastly color you might want! (I must add, my father told me before he died that the best thing about owning your own home is you can actually say to someone, “Get the he** out of my house!”)
When we moved into our humble abode, we had only two pieces of furniture: a pink foam foldout sofa (from my old bedroom at my mother’s house) and a five-foot-tall bear statue that I’d found at an antiques store and simply fell in love with.
A couple of days before the house closing, I envisioned what it might be like to spend the first night in our new home: I would light candles and cook a meal in our new kitchen. I would set out a blanket by the fireplace, and we would snack on someth
ing delicious using the few dishes we owned. I kept thinking, Oh, won’t it be lovely.
Unfortunately, my husband, while also excited, happened to be playing baseball with some company employees the day before the house closing and got rammed in the face with an elbow as the runner slid into home plate. So I spent the first night in our new home by myself while my husband recovered from orbital socket surgery in the hospital. In the silence of that empty house, I slept alone on my pink foam coach with that stupid bear looking on mockingly.
The birth of our son might have been a chance for romance. But colic isn’t very romantic. I can remember one particular night, walking in my night-gown up and down the block while holding my son who would . . . not . . . stop . . . crying.
My husband pulled up in our car from a long day of work and shouted out to me “What are you doing?”
Through tears, I yelled back with much drama, “It doesn’t matter anymore! It doesn’t matter anymore!”
He took our crying child from my arms and led me to the car. He put the baby in the baby seat, and drove the three of us to the parkway. (The constant motion of driving will help a colicky baby go to sleep.) Once we hit Exit 25, he turned south toward the beach. Our baby’s cries turned into whimpers, and by the time we reached the parking lot of the beach the baby was asleep.
Finally, peace and quiet, with only the sound of the ocean before us. My husband smiled and turned off the car. He took my hand, and we both reclined our seats and fell asleep. Under the stars, in the beach parking lot, we slept — a colicky baby and his two exhausted parents.
Now that I think about it, that’s as close to romantic as we’ve ever been.
These days, I like to think of our boxed lunches on the bleachers of our son’s Little League games as our mild attempt at romance.
I guess my husband and I are just anti-romantic, at least in the traditional sense.
Personally, though, I think all that romance stuff is somewhat overrated.