A Pear-y UnManly Dissertation

Anyone expecting details will be sorely disappointed...

So life in Baton Rouge was pretty good. I must say I was happy. Family and friends, little stress, freedom to geek out on games or movies. But there was one key element missing: true love. My grandmother keeps asking me "if I've found that little girl yet." I tell her (for example) "No, grandmom, not yet! I've been looking everywhere, too! Under rocks, in the closet... I thought I saw her yesterday underneath some heads of cabbage, but it was just a piece of fuzz." My grandmom is ... gosh ... upper 80s. She laughs at that joke, it's like a running gag between us.

I have several friends that appear to have found true love. Marriage is not always easy, or so I've been told, but is made possible when two people are working together to make it work. When both give and both are committed to the same ideal. I believe love is all you need... but love is not what most people say it is. Love is not butterflies in your stomache, or the groove of your hip. It's not quiet breakfasts spent together or late nights on the dance floor. It's not flowers or chocolates or jewelry or watches, not champaign or tuxedos or raw oysters.

All those things are wonderful and bring you together, but love what happens after all that. It's partnership, a shared future; it's knowing what your partner is thinking just by looking at her. It's complete trust. It's listening and being heard. Love is when you cease to be "I" and become "We". Love is submission.

What do you do when, after 32 years of being content with solitude, and one thinks he has found someone to love, but that someone is just out of reach? Like a succulent pear on the end of very long branch in a tall tree... if you could just stretch a little but further, you might pluck it... but more likely the branch will snap you'll take a very hard fall. Emotionally, psychologically, professionally, everything is at risk. The reach is long, the fall is hard, but the pear's nectar is sweet. What do you do? What if you tried before, only to take that fall? What if you know that its even further out than it looks? But it seems to be right there... just... at the end... of your fingertips...

What do you do?

Don't answer that question.

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