The things love has taught me

A day in which love is expressed is a day well-lived.

Last Valentine’s Day, I sent these words by WH Auden to my Irish lover:

“I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.”

For those of you that missed it, I folded up the ocean not long after, which has been unable to dry because the polar caps are melting so fast. This disturbed some stars that went squawking off in a flurry of cosmic dust; such a fuss the Irish make when a romance ends. It was a great love; he’d quote Yeats, buy me paintings by Louis d’Brocquy, photographs by Amelia Klein and Dorothy Cross, send me signed books of Seamus Heaney poetry and was as passionate as I about human rights.

Ah yes, we never marry those we should. Or rather, I don’t.

But then again, the one after him, a dour geologist, planted a crooked white stinkwood with such love that it’s growing tall and straight, and he penned magnificent haiku. How lucky can one person be?

It’s fashionable to bemoan Valentine’s Day commercialism, but no one is forcing you to take out your credit card. It’s sad that we have to be reminded to express love, but our lives are so busy we need to be nudged to make time for those we love, to be prompted to stop, listen, say something important, go deep into our heart, and “make a little love, have a little dance” as a song once suggested.

This Valentine’s Day will be wonderful. I have two key interviews, one with possibly the greatest political pollster in the world and then a famous South African author. As the evening turns into the only one diners won’t mind the lights failing in restaurants, I’ll be at home nose deep in a book I’m writing, eating giant strawberries from Woolworths.

I’m too busy for a relationship; maybe by June, I’ve told friends who’ve given up trying to match-make me. But the truth is we can’t plan these things. We receive an unexpected phone call, get chatting to someone over the veggies in a supermarket, go to a meeting, pass someone on an escalator and — va-voom — love hits us between the eyes and, if you’re like me, you become hopelessly clumsy.

I once managed to break six wine glasses during one meal cooked by a man I had decided during the meal that I fancied; he’d decided that about me a while before but I’m notoriously backward on picking up on whether someone is interested in me. I’ve always had many male friends, so I tend to see any friendship with a man as just that.

In my life I’ve been lucky to have loved a lot and been greatly loved in return. There are some things I’ve learnt; perhaps some will resonate with you. Men are more sensitive than women; we express things better, they feel them deeper. We get over things faster; they stay quietly wounded for longer.

I recently assisted with a competition that got people to write about the occasions where they loved the most. The entries from women bored me silly; they read like 1950s greeting cards. There was a lot of terrible poetry from people who had clearly never read a decent poet. Many women appear to spend a lot of time lying in men’s arms. No wonder some men walk with their knuckles almost scraping the floor; some fool woman lay in his arms all night and now he can’t bend his elbows.

Immature men think that love is about a good bonk, so they wrote about the time they did it in a cable car, on a trampoline, all night — and revealed a general failure in imagination in areas they don’t want us to contemplate. Those who think that one’s most important assets are in the bank wrote about cruises and foreign trips.

The men that had women judges swooning were those who celebrated life. The winner wrote an ode to his newborn son that came straight from his heart.

Real romance in those collected memories was not sipping champagne on a yacht. It was drinking boerekoffie in the back of a train; it was the couple who had a picnic on the floor of their new house, boxes still unpacked; it was the unemployed man who did extra work to buy polony, some potatoes and a small chocolate for his love.

I have a friend who, every year since I was 16, on Valentine’s Day has sent me flowers, a letter with pressed veld grasses, or flowers stolen from whichever pavement had the best display. We’ve never been lovers, always just friends, and it’s his gift more than any other that I look forward to every Valentine’s. (I love you too, Glenn!)

His gift typifies my favourite section from what I think is the greatest book about loving in the world, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I first read it to my son in Spanish; we lived in Argentina and my child had forgotten he was English. The little prince meets a fox and both are lonely, but the fox says he cannot play with the little prince until he is tamed.

The fox says that to tame is to establish ties. The fox explains: “To me you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you … To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you I shall be unique in all the world.”

The fox suggests that they meet at the same time each day. Anticipation creates desire.

He suggests that they don’t talk much; “words are the source of misunderstandings.” They become friends and when they have to part, both are sad. The fox imparts his secret: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

I believe it is our spirit that recognises the one we will love and it is our heart that most accurately hears.

The most precious gifts are not expensive rings or Agent Provocateur in pink and black boxes and layers of tissue that melt before excited fingers. It’s in the unexpected and heartfelt.

A treasured gift is from my son who made a tomato-box cross one birthday and wrote on it with black koki: “Happy birthday Mom I just can’t believe that your getting older by the minet you’re already 37!!!” I framed it and put it on the wall and every time I see it, it makes me smile.

There is the painting my daughter did when my son was born that shows a baby with an umbilical cord attached — yep, I took her to birthing classes and she was the only one who didn’t almost pass out when she saw the birth video. It says “I [drawing of a heart] our baby.” It’s also framed.

It’s not the gift; it’s the intent behind it. Or, as Pablo Neruda wrote:

“I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”

Love is most of all about compassion and empathy. It is about never forgiving, because in the very act of love, trust is implied and even if broken, forgiveness is not necessary. What is needed is a desire to heal, for each to look inward and find that which caused the breach; blame is rarely singular when love falters.

Rumi, the 12th-century Sufi mystic and Persian poet, wrote:

“Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn’t matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.”

Love completes, revenge and petulance hollows us.

Love is not mean-spirited. Sorry said with humility is a word too little used and even less frequently accepted with grace.

Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel had this reading from Corinthians 13 when they married:

“Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud; love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs; love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. Love never gives up; and its faith, hope and patience never fail.”

As for me: the first person who loves me and does not seek to possess me will own me. As Michael Ondaatje wrote in The English Patient:

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography — to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.”

There are a few more things I have learned:

Pain recalled is pain remade.

It is better to hear than to say.

Point scoring is relationship shedding.

I have learned too that if you’re not happy with yourself, you’ll never make anyone else happy. If you don’t take pleasure and pride in yourself, if you don’t love others a lot, every day, then a great love won’t come to you.

And remember: great loves never look like we expect them too. The love of your life might be right in front of you but because you’re too stupid to see it, you may be looking past him or her. Your eyes won’t see your great love; your spirit will.

On this Valentine’s Day, and every other day, don’t limit love to just a “special someone”. Show it to your colleagues and friends, tell your children again, thank those who give you valued service, call someone who is old or lonely, buy that Homeless Talk or Big Issue; that tray of over-ripe apricots will make great jam and bring happiness to someone who needs it. You’ll be amazed by the end of the day how much love you will have received in return.

Remember, too: a life lived without passion is a life not lived at all.