Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

After my run yesterday I decided to take myself to the movies. I saw 45 years, which I would describe as a good but kind of tough movie about life and love. I had heard mixed things about it, but I felt that it brilliantly portrayed how hard it is to be ok with the person you love loving someone else even if they also love you, as well as how complicated it is that we all take with us the experiences from the people we've loved before and that can't help but shape what we bring into our subsequent relationships.

It seems interesting to me that the couple celebrating 45 years chose this as the song for their first dance when they were married:

They asked me how I knew
My true love was true
I of course replied
Something here inside
Cannot be denied

They, said some day you'll find
All who love are blind
When your heart's on fire
You must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes

So I chaffed them, and I gaily laughed
To think they would doubt our love
And yet today, my love has gone away
I am without my love

Now laughing friends deride
Tears I cannot hide
So I smile and say
When a lovely flame dies
Smoke gets in your eyes

Not a particularly happy number, is it?

It was, however, apropos when the couple was dancing at their anniversary party under the shadows of secrets they'd kept from each other all those years...

My Prayer

A few weeks ago, my kids expressed an interest in a story they'd heard about someone who aged in reverse. I told them I'd seen a movie about that, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and they asked me to get it on Netflix so we could watch it together.

It took us a couple of weeks to find the time and a couple of days to watch it once we made the commitment (it's super long), but it was worth the wait to watch it together. I remember liking it the first time I saw it, but watching it this time, with one kid on either side of me, was magical. And sad. I felt so grateful that I got to give birth to my two beautiful babies and get to watch them grow up, I did what I do quite often when emotions arise: I cried and cried.

The other thing I felt grateful about, watching this movie about love with my kids, is the man I'm in love with -- he's so real and so good and so completely in my corner. And my kids' corner -- the visit wasn't just good for me -- it was good for them too:

So I picked this song from the soundtrack, about love and devotion, to mark this day:

When the twilight is gone and no songbirds are singing
When the twilight is gone you come into my heart
And here in my heart you will stay while I pray

My prayer is to linger with you
At the end of the day in a dream that's divine
My prayer is a rapture in blue
With the world far away and your lips close to mine

Tonight while our hearts are aglow
Oh tell me the words that I'm longing to know

My prayer and the answer you give
May they still be the same for as long as we live
That you'll always be there at the end of my prayer