Words, Words, Words

In setting Pygmalion to song, Lerner and Lowe wrote for a young lady coming into her own to sing:

Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words! 
I get words all day through;First from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do? Don’t talk of stars burning above; If you’re in love, Show me! Tell me no dreams filled with desire.If you’re on fire, Show me!Here we are together in the middle of the night!Don’t talk of spring! Just hold me tight!Anyone who’s ever been in love’ll tell you that This is no time for a chat!Haven’t your lips longed for my touch? Don’t say how much, Show me! Show me!Don’t talk of love lasting through time. Make me no undying vow. Show me now!

We don't experience unlimited opportunity for redemption in the Last Quarter and words often ring hollow. Tevya asks his Lady: "Do you love me." She answers with cooked meals served, babies born and clothes cleaned. Tevya, still in the midst of the Third Quarter is not satisfied: "But do you love me?"

Many are the great thinkers who've written about Love .... the Harlows and Suomi wrote about it in primates .... Theodore Reik and Ethel Spector Person wrote of it from a psychological perspective. Many others, too.

And many are those who accept the accoutrement's of love as sufficient. Enough sex. Certain special types of sex. A number of lawns mowed and plumbing leaks fixed. Unthinking agreement. Love, indeed, can be "just a four letter word," as the young Bobby Zimmerman sang in the 60's.

Anyhow, I do think we denizens of the Last Quarter -- closer in age to Lerner and Lowe composing than to  Lisa Doolittle singing the song -- crave something from our near and dear. but what is it? 

Reik wrote mainly of young love which, he believed, was born in envy. I see something in another that is beyond my abilities and I'm drawn to it ... sometimes like a moth to the flame. I wrote some 15 years ago (a chapter in a book about men in the 21st C.) about my envy for M and her relationship to her (our?) brood and now grandbrood. I never could duplicate with myself the visceral closeness that exists between a mother and her kids. I wrote it after our middle child had spoken up at a 50th birthday celebration for his Mother ... "She's the Mommy," he said. Daddy's, alas, die young and are replaced by Fathers ... if they're lucky? by Dear Old Dads.

There are so many words to semantically parse ... Love, Kindness, Acceptance, Embracing, Being-with, .... I could go on. Maybe it's enough to add descriptors ... Mother-Love ... Young Love .... Joint-Parenting Love .... Empty Nest Love .... After-Surgery Love ...  Late-Life Love. 

I obviously need to think about this more but it strikes me that the Bumper-Sticker Love comes closest to what I'd like in this, my dotage: Random Acts of Kindness.

I will think more on it but right at the moment? I think I'd opt for Gratuitous Kindness, especially having seen no lack of Gratuitous Enmity (Sin'as Chinam, in another language) in the couples I've known.

"Words, Words, Words. I'm so sick of words."