Love and Lawn Care

We were back in Ohio this weekend visiting with my family and I had a chance to see something that really choked me up. For several months my mother's dog (a shih-tzu (insert all jokes here)) has struggled with a flea and itching issue that drives the poor little dog insane. Seems our little feisty girl Missy, is super sensitive to fleas and anything else that gets on her skin as well. Missy is a great dog and my mom's constant companion. She gives nothing but love and adoration to my parent's, but she has lost her bed sleeping privileges due to the constant itching. From costly medicines to bathing treatments and frontline plus, my Mom has tried it all and still Missy's issue persists.

At the suggestion of a woman at work, my Mother purchased a bag of Ortho flea and insect killing seed for the yard. Determined to help her little pup out, she donned her yard work clothing and outdoors she headed. However, this weekend was a rainy one and as I watched my Mom dutifully put down the seed, the sight I wasn't prepared to see choked me up. Behind my Mother with a giant umbrella shadowing each step so as not one drop of water to fall upon her head was my Father. He shielded her every move as she moved about the yard.

As I sat and watched this I found a lump in my throat a mile wide as I saw with my eyes what almost 50 years of marriage really looks like. There was no asking from my Mother for his help, he just did it because. I realized then and there all the bull I had been fed since my youth by the media about love was BUNK. For all the passion we are told we are to have for our spouse 25/8 (oh yes, overkill) there is very rarely mentioned the smallest things that show the greatest love and dedication. We are too be handsome, strong, in great shape and sexually potent like an 18-year-old boy if we are men and as women, heaven forbid we have a poochy tummy from childbirth or a simple wrinkle from all the laughter we have shared with friends and family. No, we are to wipe that memory our face keeps for us at the first sign. We are to be forever young.

I don't know about you, but when I was young, I was pretty stupid. I was stupid about love, life and responsibility and commitment. I believed what I was fed and when it didn't fit the fairytale, I was out of there. I had allowed myself to believe the hype. It was BIG BIG BIG. Small things were no longer treasured, they are assumed. Seems we have turned into a romantic culture of "you have to do this" versus "thank you so much for caring enough to do that." We are breeding a culture of self centered, ungrateful brats who have no sense of what real love is anymore. We think it's a pretty face, or great ab's or "bling." Again, what that person can give to us versus what we have to offer them in return. We as women are the sex kittens and you as men are the moneymakers. You cannot control your cheating ways and we cannot be pretty enough, smart enough or have enough material possessions to keep up with everyone else. What a cunning distraction for us to be reared with in the media! If you make a generation believe that this is all there is, then you effectively destroy the family and without the family bond and strength, you destroy the nation.

Nancy Pelosi, Cher, Joan Rivers can have all the botox in the world injected into their now misshapen and frightening faces, but when they wake up in the morning, they are still in their senior years physically. The heart is weak, the eyes are blurry and the mind is not the steel trap it once was. The urges of youth no longer pump through older veins with the fervency it once did. Same with men, David Hasselhoff, Bruce Jenner along with Kenny Rogers are now misshapen scary looking old men trying desperately to hold onto a virility long past. All the PR in the world cannot change the REAL truth.

I feel sorry for these people for I wonder if Nancy feels bad for tearing apart the American Family Unit and if Cher and her multiple failed relationships and Joan's anger truly are as satisfying as watching my two older parents comfort, care and commit to one another as this, another new phase of their life together begins.

Thanks Mom and Dad for once again showing me what it's all about without ever uttering a word.

I love you both and John thanks for being my rock and being willing to let me be the same for you as well. Lord willing one of our five will write this about us one day too.