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Dororthy’s Place: Romance and comfort
Arcadia Weekly Feb 21, 2013
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A soft rain is falling outside. Here in our living room the air is being warmed by the gas logs burning in the fireplace. The cats are settled in their favorite spots, each curled as only cats can curl. My husband and I are cozy and warm as we listen to Jackie Gleason playing My Funny Valentine. The perfect romantic setting.
Therein the romance ends. What can you expect from anyone old enough to have a Jackie Gleason LP? I’m lying back in my recliner with a box of tissues at my side and a pillow under my knee to relieve my sciatica. Hubby is sitting in his chair with another box of tissues and a cup of hot lemon and honey. Somehow it’s not the romantic picture the setting calls for. Two old geezers in the throes of devilish germs do not a romantic picture make.
The record is old, the turntable is new. Thank God for remote controls. Neither of us will have the energy to move when the last strains float into the air. I’ll probably click the button and we’ll just both doze off. We’ll enjoy a good nap until one of us gets a coughing jag or has a sneezing fit.
Coughing jags and sneezing fits don’t create romantic pictures either. They throw one into all kinds of gyrations that urge each body orifice to emit its own specialty. That usually brings about a giggle from me and a snicker, at best from him.
Forty-eight years ago we would have died of embarrassment. And, I would never have dreamed of letting him see me with no lipstick, my hair hanging in my face and wearing a pair of slippers from the Great Depression. Nor would he have let me see him in such a beaten-up old robe. Come to think of it, forty-eight years ago may have been when it was new. Some things just get comfortable with age.
Ah, yes. Therein lies the romance. We still look good to each other and sciatica, coughing jags and sneezing fits aside, we just feel comfortable.
Click.
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