I love December. I’m sure you’re thinking it’s made easier because I’ve never had to deal with snow and sludge, freezing temperatures and pipes that burst. Those things are rarely experienced in places like San Diego, Key West and the south of Spain. But living as I have in the warmer climes my entire life has only my heart grow fonder.
And speaking of hearts, mine is wired for anything that can be even remotely construed as hopelessly romantic — Jane Austin, The Goodbye Girl, Sleepless in Seattle, Harry Nilhsson’s “Without You”, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese…Dorothy and Toto…I can’t help it.
Oddly, all my loveliest swoonable memories can be traced back to December. The MoH and I became inextricably involved in December of 1987. For me, it was almost as painful as an unrequited crush in junior high. Thankfully, my life with the MoH has had a lovely outcome — one that has endured 20 years.
I get sappy when I hear certain songs and have warm memories of going to movies, or sitting on the same side of the table in tacky restaurants sipping margaritas and holding hands. Doing crossword puzzles, taking long walks, and window shopping in malls filled our spare time because they were free and neither of us had any money.
We also wrote love letters to one another.
I still have them, and get a bit squirmy thinking of the pages that are raw with emotion. It’s a wonder they’ve survived me, always on the verge of ridding myself of anything that could be classified as embarassing to myself. But I tuck them away each time I happen across them, glad that they mark a time that mattered so much. Some day, they’ll belong to the RT so he can be mortified that his parents felt the way they do about one another.
When I first knew the MoH, I remember my understandably horrified mother questioning the extent to which I might be in love with “that boy” one night while I was ironing in her house where I was living with my two older boys, not quite 5 and 6. The MoH is nearly seven years younger than I, but no, I wouldn’t have classified him as a boy.
And I did fancy myself in love with him.
Still. 
We can’t help ourselves.
It has made all the difference.
It’s called perspective. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
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