NFL
By: Brock Vierra
I thought love was a magical force, revealed through big moments of romantic intentions. Love is weddings, big celebrations right? Perhaps it is in the big displays of grandeur or of a gal in a big gown. Isn’t that what love is? Isn’t love for a man the ability to witness a beautiful woman, in a beautiful dress, covered in makeup, and littered in jewelry? Isn’t that what love is? Turns out it’s not. Love is the expression on your best friend’s face after riding the Incredicoaster at California Adventure in the pouring rain.
Love is sitting next to your lover, strapped in with a plastic harness, zooming through the wind and rain, while the water’s sharpness at over 100 mph hits your face like needles. Love is watching your partner wipe her face, with glasses in her hand as she’s laughing in an overpriced plastic pancho after enduring such an adventure.
Turns out love is the random incidence of the human experience. Sunday. February 4th. California Adventure, Anaheim, California. My girl, dressed in her Mickey and Minnie tarot card shirt titled “The Lovers,” a Disney varsity jacket and pink Mickey ears. I’m dressed in cargo pants, a Dinaco shirt, a black jacket, and a baby blue Chargers hat she brought me from our first Christmas together. “Sunny” California is only in the title. Our fourth anniversary, the sky dressed in grey. The weather is cool as displayed by our outfits. Two vastly different styles united by the anniversary pins that my girlfriend purchased for us.
Love is the constant congratulations by the cast members. The quick lunch we shared in San Fransokyo. A wheat bread bowl filled with clam chowder for me, birria tacos for her. Pym’s punch that was a bit too punchy if you know what I mean. Perhaps it was soaring over the world, followed by a quick run to Starbucks. A morning stroll down Avenger’s campus, sipping on our specially crafted go-go juice, watching what a morning would be like in Wakanda with some very good actors.
Love is forcing each other to make the walk home in the rain, to a hotel room that has been substituted for heaven. A warm embrace after a cold, wet day fighting nature. The feeling of laying on the bed after a much deserved hot shower. The laughter of a day not soon to be forgotten. That’s love.
It seems that as the years go by, the feelings you share with another remain strong but get a bit stale. You love them, you’re in love with them but that special feeling gets subdued in time. Yet this past year has showed me that the spark, when there, has an ability to reignite themselves at a moment’s notice.
Perhaps it is the car ride from an event when that particular song comes on the radio. The toils that come with babysitting her niece and nephew and when her young niece eventually throws up, you both go into parent mode to clean up the mess. It’s seeing her act like a mother to a child that is not hers. Showing the compassion, love and care she’ll eventually share with your children.
Perhaps it is the drive. The road trip to California. The hot coco in the morning, the sights of the insignificant points of population that make this country great. The witnessing of the weird art of America’s wasteland. A graffitied abandoned waterpark in the desert. A train passing by, a town made of four buildings, a “Ron Paul Revolution” billboard. Perhaps it is stopping in Barstow, California to eat a burger and switch drivers. Perhaps its the promise or the potential of another adventure in the near future. That’s love.
Perhaps it is eating ice cream while watching Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. You both making fun of each other’s families, you both talking shit, she calling you a bitch and you calling her a whore before wrapping each other in their arms. Maybe it’s all of the above. All I know is that to find a good woman is to strike oil. A good woman is worth over ten times their weight in gold and then some. I am nothing without my woman and those random instances of love are a constant reminder why.
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