"The Man I Love"

This is a great song. In the paragraph of introduction the editors speak of how odd it is that this song should be a standard when it's never been part of a successful musical (and yet it is, somehow, the very first song in our new section 'All-Time Broadway Hit Parade'). And I say, duh, this is Gershwin. It's good.

The man I love. Now this is no big surprise. I have been in love with my husband, lo, these eleven years. When I met him, and fell so madly in love, I noted to myself that this was the very most in love that I had ever been. Then this was fairly significant, since I admitted to myself that the man I loved most, previous to this, was not the man I was at that time married to. And somehow, magically, after all my wild and crazy years of being unable to resist the pull of 'loving' anyone who crossed my path and my fancy at the same time (and oh, there were many), I found myself very happily monogamous. Now I am still very happily monogamous, and occasionally I think, this is weird. No trail off, no gradual decline, just coming to my fair city, standing on a concrete turtle one weekend, and then never having to sleep with anyone else but him. He says, Ah, no surprise, I am a force of nature. Well, I don't have tons of better explanations. But I do think that something happens to people when they enter their late twenties, as I was then, some sort of big shift in our individual worlds. Astrologers call this the Saturn return. I don't believe in astrology per se, but I do find that it has some true resonances, and I find no harm in profound meanings, however oddly they come into my view. The world is strange, at best, and full of mystery. So I find this Saturn return thing to be a valid occurance: something big happens as we enter our thirties that transforms us radically further into ourselves as we will be from then on.

So here I am, still in love, still happy. Now, I also know that this is a deliberate choice on my part. I, again, choose this love, and choose it over and over again. That's my method, when it is my desire. And part of the reason for the choice was knowing that yes, I had in the past chosen widely, but it was time to go deeper. And I chose a man who could be my partner through that depth of learning and seeking. I chose a man who makes me laugh, who is never boring, who I still find unbelievably attractive, a clever, amazing man. Lucky me: through all sorts of adventures, more and less pleasant, still with the man I love, and happy to be exactly here.