A gaze that cannot look away

I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.

- John Keats

I am a believer in the wonder of Romance - down to my toes. I think that is why I work in a Botanical Garden. It was a gift, getting to work in this garden; a surprise summons of sorts, one that I had not foreseen or sought in any way, gently laid before me for the taking one day and seeming to whisper: “Come. There is more than meets the eye.”

I have seen many a beautiful thing happen here. Flowers work wonders on souls. I witness it everyday. The Divine presence speaking mysteriously through the things he has made.

An eight hour, work-frazzled face enters through the front door and departs floating an hour later with a look of peace and wonder - stopping long enough at my counter to rhapsodize on the beauty of roses and how she just never knew they could be so beautiful.

Exhausted, four o’clock moms with careening strollers and children broiling all about them, catch, out of the corner of their eye, their three year old tossing great handfuls of fish food like a benevolent child king to the bright and splashing, orange koi beneath him in the sunlit water, and screeching with three year old delight at their flashing tails and opened mouths. And just like that, the mom loves being a mom all over again, and is not tired anymore.

Elderly, soft spoken gentlemen with canes hobble painfully in with taut faces, and return two hours later with stories of Cardinal birds chirping about their feet like children telling a marvelous story. They have a sudden memory from their own childhood and shyly ask if you want to hear it. And you always, always say yes.

It is a magical place, this garden. But there was one day in particular I will never forget. Ever. I was behind the counter checking people in. Because I am so short, I cannot see what is on the other side. I can only see the faces at the window.

Up comes this jovial, twinkling man all smiles and jokes and fun. He was one of those people you wish you could stare at for five minutes without him knowing you were staring - just to soak in the joy radiating off of him.

I sold him his ticket and he turned to go with a wink and a wave. Then I heard him say, “Well, dear heart, here we go. Into the magical garden.”

And then I saw her.

She was in a wheelchair - a woman in the later stages of a degenerative disease - all slumped down in her cushions. She was dressed impeccably, and was loved so as well, this very Dear Heart. Perhaps she heard and understood him. I cannot say.

But it was the love in his eyes, the cheer in his voice, the tenderness of his touch on her shoulder as he leaned down to her ear: "The tulips are out in bloom. And the hyacinths. The daffodils. Ah, we are going to see them all, my darling." His seemingly one-sided conversation lilted on and on until he was out the door and into the “magical garden” with his darling where they soon drifted into the trees and away.

I was left overwhelmed by the sudden beauty of it; as though they had their own sort of language through which love passed like energy that was almost tangible. A language learned over time with daily use. That they were seeing things I could not, wrapped in their own romance grown fragrantly lush all around them over the years. A romance that had memorized the other’s face, voice, movements. A love that had gazed long and with fascination over the years and would not forget what was read there. They saw it still, these “dear hearts.”

It left me wondering. What is romance? How would I define it? The dictionary says it is a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement and remoteness from everyday life. I think that is a very good definition. I would only add one more all-important thing. The element of surprise. The magic key to its beauty. Romance almost always takes us off guard. It dawns on us slowly, this exquisite, and fragile discovery: being known by another. Not just acknowledged with a passing glance. Known.

Any true lover worth his or her salt becomes a master of observation. The Beloved becomes a constant study because we cannot look away. At first it is furtive, stolen glances and as we all might know by experience, it can be quite torturous. Then we begin hearing inflections in voice, a preference for color, what makes her eyes dance, why she cries. What makes him quiet. What makes him laugh out loud. That ratty tee shirt he loves so much - and why is that? How she reads poetry and is suddenly overwhelmed by the words she is reading and looks up to the ceiling for a minute. We begin laughing at their jokes. Nothing escapes us. We long to tell them but must wait for the right moment. And we continue to gather observations like flowers that give off intoxicating scents. We grow a bit tipsy with the joy of it.

Pictures from the author’s private collection of love-letters from her husband

The Romance happens when we begin revealing to the beloved that we know them. Little gifts, tokens of understanding. A favorite flower. A trip to a favorite coffee shop. A book discovered at a used bookstore that she could never find.

When we were poor as Church mice at the beginning of our courtship, my husband took me on a surprise, early morning excursion to the symphony. I was quite puzzled at first, but to my utter surprise we were allowed to sit and listen to the rehearsals for a Mozart piano concerto. And I got to see how the music was made - the dialogue between conductor and musicians. All free of charge. I was twitterpated after that [ed. note - the author has been queried about this particular phrase and she assures that it’s legit]. This man who remembered how I loved Mozart and the making of beautiful things - this man had been watching me and was fascinated. Tony tells me that he was completely charmed when we were first married and had just moved to Michigan. Our moving vans were very late. All we had were two 12-packs of Busch beer and some stray kitchen odds and ends that had had been stuffed into our Buick Skylark after the wedding. He came home from work to a 24-pack “table” I had covered with placemats and a bottle of wine with one slightly bent candle salvaged from who knows where. That’s when he knew, he said, that he was a lucky man to have found his own “castle” made out of my love and our bits and pieces. In our later years, the charm is still there. It is the way I hear a soft “Bye, hon” in the early dark hours of morning with a little tug on my foot before he catches the bus to work. It is the way I make his coffee at just the right time when he enters the door after 6:30am Mass.

I don’t suppose there is any greater joy than watching your beloved's face, for the very first time, break into that charmed surprise. And feel the warmth of recognition grow in his or her eyes that says, “You know me. I am a study for your heart. And you cannot look away. Now I know.”

No true romantic settles for the cliched chocolates and flowers, mind you. Each reveal has its own unique spirit as unique in number and kind as there are beloveds in the world. I think the most romantic thing I ever witnessed is my brother-in-law reducing my very sensible, no-nonsense sister to a misty eyed puddle when she opened a beautifully carved hunting knife as her wedding present. He knew her. What she loved. And she found herself overwhelmed with joy.

Romance is a keen observer down to the smallest details. Romance is brave and courageous and manly. It has the bravado to say out loud. "You fascinate me! You fascinate me to a place that is remote from everyday life and yet is revealed to me through it. I cannot and do not want to look away.”

There is a wonderful letter written to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, while he was being imprisoned by the Nazis, from his young and lively fiancee Maria Wedemeyer. She missed him terribly but instinctively sought him in his parent's home in Berlin, which had of course been his home for many years. She wrote these words:

Oh, I fell in love with everything. Your house, the garden, and - most of all - your room. I don't know what I wouldn't give to be able to sit there again, if only to look at the ink blots on your desk pad. Everything has become so real and clear to me since I "met" you at your parents' home yesterday. The desk where you write your books and your letters to me, your armchair and the ashtray, your shoes on the shelf and your favorite pictures...I never thought I could miss you and long for you more than I do...in that room.

It is so beautifully odd how much our romantic love is wrapped up in the most seemingly insignificant, physical things keenly observed: books, ashtrays, shoes, desks. It reveals that our love is hardly ever "ethereal." All the best things we love about our beloveds are hidden in the things they dwell among and love.

I believe Maria's words to Dietrich left him with a heart FULL of understanding and made him love her all the more for memorizing him down to his very shoes. He probably held that physical letter to his heart as if it were her. And it WAS her. It was her handwriting, her thoughts, her heart in physical form. He was memorizing her by reading it. And after he died, she would always have him truly by heart in her own memory.

It is why we smile when we enter a closet and smell our wife's perfume slightly lingering in the air. It is why we save old flowers, wine bottles from tables where we sat long and lingering on those first dates. Why we save a clumsy, awkwardly homemade valentine. It is why engagement rings are so beautiful and are given in memorable places. They are given by someone who dared to love us in every particular and has memorized our very being. This is what it means that the two shall become as one.

Human love is beautiful. We are so of the earth and not of it. Our romance is expressed in that exact way. It is not an "ocean of mystery" although it is full of sweet, mysterious surprises.

It is as near and understandable, both to men and to women, as books on a desk and ink blots on a desk pad, in a wink, in a sidelong glance or a slightly crooked smile.

My little couple who disappeared among the trees into the magic garden had found the secret to love. Romance that looked beyond a disease, a wheelchair, a sad despair because these were not of the beloved. They knew. They had been memorizing each other in body and soul now for how many years? Romance surrounded them in an understanding so thick that no sorrow could penetrate.

Where does this romance come from if not from God? God is love. And I would say that God is the most Romantic one of us all. He knows each of us in every particular and does not want to look away. He has created this sudden discovery in us of being known and loved by Him. He spoke to us with a human voice, He saw us under fig trees, at wells, up a sycamore tree, and from the cross, in the Confessional and in His Body and Blood. I see you, He longs to say. I see you and do not want to look away. And suddenly we realize that we are known down to the least particle of our being. And charmed unto surprise, we turn our gaze to His, this observant Beloved, this lover Who only has eyes for us. And now we know.