"A Valentine's Day Message"

With Valentine’s Day appearing Friday, this essay is a little early, but love knows no calendar.

A beautiful wintery morning has arrived here in Connecticut. It reminds me of February days of yore.

 

The photo (“When Cupid’s Arrow Struck”) was taken on Friday March 9, 1962, the day Caroline agreed to be my Valentine for life. With her roommate and fiancé, Caroline and I were driving from Boston to New Hampshire for a weekend skiing at Wildcat Mountain. The photo was taken somewhere along New Hampshire’s coast.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“A Valentine’s Day Message”

February 9, 2025

 

“The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.”

                                                                                                Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)

                                                                                                Interview, U.S. News & World Report, October 27, 1986

 

Love is a unique sensation. Your definition of the word may differ from mine. It is ubiquitous in that every child born is embraced with the instinctual, maternal love of its mother. Love allows a child to understand they are integral to their family. Love is all around us, yet also singular. When missing, its absence is felt. It can arrive quickly, as did my love for Caroline not long after we met (and which has persisted for sixty-three years), or it may germinate for several months, even years, before blossoming. And, sadly, it sometimes dies.

 

We mostly think of love in terms of the one we marry, the individual we have chosen to share our life. But love assumes different forms. Love for one’s parents and one’s children are not the same. The former rests on the appreciation for one’s conception, while the latter is based on the knowledge that one’s children are the creation of you and your spouse, and that all one’s descendants, carry one’s genes into the future, making life eternal. It is spiritual, as in love for God. It can be generic, as in love for one’s country or for one’s fellow man. Love for one’s pets is not the same as love for one’s spouse, but it is nonetheless real. Love demands involvement, as Elie Wiesel suggested. It may be blind, however, as when passion, compassion, or admiration are mistaken for love. In such cases, it may be unrequited, for love is not always equally shared. 

 

Two hundred years ago Noah Webster defined the word as an “affection of the mind,” feelings of “esteem and benevolence” “animal desires between the sexes.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word: characterized “by strong feelings of affection for another, arising out of kinship, companionship, admiration, or benevolence;” it is “an individual emotion.” It has been used, the dictionary says, “to refer to sexual attraction or erotic desire.”

 

Today, we use the word liberally. “love you,” we say or write to our children and grandchildren when departing, ending a phone call or completing a text message. We hug one another and say how much we love them. Is the word over-used? I think not, for expressions of love make us considerate and respectful. On my shaving mirror is a saying, attributed to the University of Notre Dame’s longest serving president, Father Theodore Hesburgh (1917-2015): “The most important thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother.”

 

Like many of my generation, I was born into a family who loved me but who were not demonstrative of love, or, in fact, of most emotions. Saying “I love you,” and hugging were not common forms of expression. While I knew I was loved, the word ‘love’ was used only when signing letters. The last time I saw my father, in late November 1968 as he was dying of cancer, I told him I loved him, and I remember the awkwardness I felt when I said the words. Less than a year later – the evening before he died – I stopped to see my father-in-law in New York before heading back to Connecticut. I told him my wife loved him. I recall my words seemed forced, even as I knew Caroline loved him deeply.

 

As a college freshman in an introductory class in psychology, we were asked to define love. I demurred, unable to define a sensation I barely understood. Perhaps I was wrong for not attempting, as today I suspect the professor was not looking for a precise definition but to initiate a discussion.

 

A fun story: In the early 2000s, I was in Louisiana on a business trip. Two of us had been visiting a client in Baton Rouge, before driving to New Orleans to fly back to New York the next day. That evening we had dinner at Galatoire’s, a century-old restaurant on Bourbon Street. By chance, we were seated at a table next to Leon Galatoire and a lady friend. Mr. Galatoire had had a few drinks, and we started chatting and soon joined the two tables. My friend bought two copies of Leon Galatoire’s cookbook. Asked to sign them, Mr. Galatoire complied. My copy – today one of my treasures – shows three attempts to sign it, the last reading: “For Sydney, Love you so much! Bon appétit, Leon Galatoire.”

 

To love and to be loved are among the greatest sensations available to us as humans. As one of life’s eternal mysteries, it is too big a subject to be covered in this short essay. It has been written about by poets and portrayed by artists, far more articulate than I am. Nevertheless, I felt the urge to write something as we approach Valentine’s Day. “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies,” is a quote attributed to Aristotle, signifying the deep connection felt between two people in love.  When Justice Stewart Potter was asked to describe his test for obscenity, he replied, “I know it when I see it.” Today my answer to my psychology professor would be, I know love when I feel it. And I have been fortunate in being loved, especially by my wife Caroline, and by my children and grandchildren, but also by a large extended family and by numerous friends.

 

In Henry James novel The Portrait of a Lady there is a scene in which the dying Ralph Touchett, speaks to his cousin Isabel Archer; he contrasts physical pain and love: “It’s (the pain) very deep, but…it passes; it’s passing now. But love remains.” It does, but to receive and experience it, we must be open to it and generous with it.

 

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!