Brief History of Love

http://www.pen-ne.org/henry-david-thoreau-prize/

Diane Ackerman won PEN's Henry David Thoreau prize for her excellence in nature writing and will be honored with this award on Thursday night at MIT. I'm thinking of going to hear her speak. She says it will be "autobiographical".

Definitions seem to plague my mind as a budding memoirist. Last night it was E. O. Wilson's defining the meaning of meaning. Tonight my mind has been leaping back to a book I read nearly 20 years ago by Diane Ackerman; The Natural History of Love. 

The book was given to me as a birthday gift, shortly after I'd broken up with a long-term live-in boyfriend. I was becoming known as an agent who liked to represent natural history and natural science books. A writer, who I represented and who was a long time friend of the ex's, gave it to me.
She knew I'd find solace in reading it, and I did.

In Ackerman's Introduction to The Natural History of Love, she wrote this gem:

"Human history is not a journey along a landscape, in the course of which we leave one town behind as we approach another. Nomads constantly on the move, we carry everything with us, all we possess. We carry the seeds and nails and remembered hardships of everywhere we have lived, the beliefs and hurts and bones of every ancestor. Our baggage is heavy. We can't bear to part with anything that ever made us human. The way we love in the twentieth century is as much an accumulation of past sentiments as a response to modern life."

What evolutionary task does love set for us as humans? It is one of our oldest words and concepts. It has surprisingly few synonyms. It is often declared in violent and physical terms, some might even argue primitive or preverbal. How have we carried it with us, taught it, learned it, lived it and progressed with it?

My own personal history is painful. I can still remember the night my parents told my sister and me that they were getting a divorce, I was almost seven, but the threat of it had been played out for the prior two years. We were in the kitchen of our 1700's farmhouse, and I distinctly remember wondering to myself, "where did their love go", and at some really deep dark and lonely place, "will their love for me leave, too?".

I was already a shy girl, but this line of question, perhaps made me shyer. As a teenager, I was boy crazy. My journals are riddled with names of boys who I spent far to much time thinking about, while on a parallel obsession, trying to get my mother to allow me to live with my father. I think the two are related. The year I did live with him, my senior year of High School, was my least boy crazed and beginning of a new kind of self respect.

Living on the boat with Ron was the most romantic journey of love, literal and figurative, that I as a young woman would carry, and I did for a decade after I left. Every man I met for years, had to stand up to his measure. He was my Beatrice, and yet I actually knew him. He came to see me every few years and would ask me to sail away with him. Even though he was 13 years my senior, I'd out grown him and we both knew it. Yet, we carried that bond between us, which to this day, hasn't broken.

The last three men I said I loved, all hurt me and now I carry that pain. The heavy baggage. The first one lied to me by omission. The second one lied and betrayed me. (He later sought me out to admit his  crimes and ask for my forgiveness). The third, and final, did all of the above. He has not fully admitted his crimes, and yet I must forgive him for the sake of the children we created and my own sanity.

I remember the week before I was married, my father asked me about my philosophy of love. He wondered how with so many bad dates and heartbreaks, I'd remained hopeful. I remember telling him that I read many books and saw many films and believed in them. Just like I'd read many novels about great adventures at sea and bartering your way around the world. If you suggest the possible and splice it with remembered positive experiences (the family love pre-divorce and the parental unconditional love after the divorce), then it can become  a reality that over-rides the hurts laid bare at your feet.

People often misquote Darwin when they speak of his theory of evolution being the survival of the fittest.  That is NOT what he wrote. He wrote about the survival of the most adaptable. I'm wanting to break down my personal history of love, life and the intersection of the two, so that I may build a bridge or new foundation on the next sight where love presents itself to me. That will mean leaving behind some familiar possessions, as they have proven nonproductive in my ability to love and be loved. I'm trying to embrace this change, since that is the only constant in life. Next time love enters my life, I'll have new packet of germinated seeds and strong driving nails to construct a home  worthy of a great love.

Ms. Ackerman's newest book is entitled: The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us. As I wrote in last nights blog, a new era and movement that we're defining as we create it. Kind of like life and love.

For now, I live in the land of mother-love and I'm hoping to model a strong love of self to my kids. so when they rise up to meet a lover, they will find some one who is worthy.

Good night, middle-aged lovers ~ where ever your are, G'night.