First Love or Heartbreak featuring Amy Lane

             One of the odd things my husband and I have in common—besides being born thirty-six hours apart in the fall of 1967—is that our parents “had” to get married.  And then they absolutely had to get divorced.
              We were nineteen-year-old virgins when we got together, and the one thing we knew for absolute certain was that first love did not always last.
                And so far it has “not lasted” for almost twenty-eight years.  Last night we had the “Yes, we are once again financially screwed” discussion. This morning he did something harmless and goofy for me, just to make me laugh.  We touch each other’s hips or shoulders or hands as we pass in the hallways.  We try very hard to crack each other up when we’re watching a movie, and we have watched movies together for the last twenty-eight years, so we can quote our favorites together as we watch.
                We are besotted with our children. And we can talk about our dimwitted dogs for hours.
                 And even though I’m not always in the mood, I still go to basketball games when he asks me.  And even though he can run half-marathons, he still limps along with me for my half-mile walk around the block and helps me find dog poop in the dark, just so we have a quiet space in our day to talk.
                When I work too many late nights, he starts looking haggard—he can’t sleep well without me beside him in our broken-down bed with our lumpy mattress. And he calls me almost every night when he’s stuck in traffic, so we can catch up on our day.
                 And I could go on and on and on about the things we do or say, every day, to make sure that we do not lose that tenuous contact, that brilliant, blinding, necessary immersion in each other that denotes being in love.
               We both saw—grew up with, to some extent—the idea that whatever it is that binds two people together, there is no foolproof way to keep them that way. Not a job, not a common interest, certainly not a child. Whatever it is that makes the two of us one, it’s got to come from inside us, and it has to come daily. Every small thing we do to make each other happy is worth it. Every moment we take to be us is a moment we take to bind our family—children included—closer.
               And it’s a moment to make sure that even after our children leave, we will still be us.
              All families start with a family of two. All relationships take work. I think the reason our first love may possibly end up being our only love is that we had that awareness from the very beginning that it could end.
              And then we worked every day to make it begin.
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              Author Bio:  Amy Lane has two kids in college and two kids in soccer, and four fur-babies up in her business as she writes. She, her Mate, and her brood live in a crumbling crapmansion and squander their funds on movies, travel, and joy. She is the author of many books, and cannot imagine not writing.
Website: www.greenshill.com
Blog: www.writerslane.blogspot.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amy.lane.167
Twitter: @amymaclane
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_2?ie=UTF8&field-author=Amy+Lane&search-alias=books&text=Amy+Lane&sort=relevancerank