In much youthful days (ergo: teensomething), I always reckoned love, at least in the romantic sense, to be much like the eternal flame of the Kennedy Memorial, constant and always hot. Married with a kid, another on the way and years later, I've realized it not to be true.
After the intial high of falling in love and settling down with your chosen love/lifemate, love actually comes in different degrees, temperature-wise, in different times. One day your love is full of red-hot passion and the next day its the embers of a dying out fire that has ceased to burn but continues to wrap you in its warm embrace. In the life of marital bliss it is usually the latter that defines most of your times with your better half. Its now up to both of you to squeeze in the former and bring up the romance despite the temptation to just settle in and let the security of a lifelong bond lull you into complacency. For truly, the courtship does not end when the ring slips through your finger and vows are made at the altar.
But then, even without much effort the love just comes at you and you feel like you are back again to those heady times when you felt like your heart is bursting with just the sight of your mate.
Just like the other day when I woke up with great pain and the hubby lost no time in taking care of me. I didn't need to ask, he just understood what I needed and what had to be done. He gave me medicines and made me drink kamalunggay to hasten my recovery. He took care of B__ and made sure I got my rest. After that, even Brad Pitt wouldn't have gotten a second glance from me for my loved one was way, way up there in the attraction scale.
So I came to the conclusion that while the myths of youth have been shattered, with it came the knowledge that the strongest kind of love actually need not be always be 300degress hot, just something that's steady with sporadic burst of flames that puts up the necessary spice for a relationship to last.
