Everyday Romance

A moonless night, long since fallen, suffuses a front lawn, buried deep under icy white, in indigo shadows. Stars glitter across the frozen expanse of space, their feeble light shivering as if from bitter cold. A lone candle flame in a window bravely faces the dark.

Two television trays stand side by side under a starched cloth, its mended corner turned to face the wall, beneath the bay window of a tiny ranch house. An empty Chianti bottle of uncertain vintage, topped with the stub of a candle, presides over this ersatz bistro table. 

A man has arrived home, and having tucked in his children, returns to the kitchen to take his wife in his arms. They sway together for a moment to the strains of their song as it plays in their hearts. He kisses the top of her head. She laughs and shoos him into the living room. He complies, placing a cocktail at each of the simple place settings, and a record on the turntable. He waits for her at the little oasis of romance in the window. Music drifts softly from the stereo as they share a simple meal of salad, steak sandwiches, and quiet conversation. The uncertainty and turmoil of America in the early seventies find no quarter in their refuge from the world, to which it is only another Thursday night.

Of course, my parents knew their share of conflicts and cares. Only a couple of years into that turbulent decade my father lost his sweetheart. He carried on alone. I carry the memories of their everyday romance in my heart. It colors how I see my own marriage. It seasons my approach to life.

They shared this romance with us as children. He would buy her four roses on each of our birthdays, one for each child they had together. Several times a year they took us with them to the little supper club where each month, with money squirreled away from the grocery budget, they would go to dinner, afterwards dancing to waltzes and foxtrots played by a three piece band. Those evenings when we were welcomed into their love story made me feel as if I had stepped into a movie. I watched my mother glide across the dancefloor in my father’s embrace, eyes on his eyes that beheld only hers. The best part for me, though, was when it was my turn to dance with my handsome father. I felt so grownup, one hand resting in the palm of his hand with its long, elegant fingers, the other small hand resting on his forearm. 

In anticipation of the annual February celebration so associated with romance, I became curious about this word. In my reminiscence it appeared to me romance entailed something beyond mere physical attraction, but what? On an arctic evening, curling up with a glass of golden wine and an old friend, Mr. Webster, I sought to shed light upon the question even as the sun fled a pale sky, seeking warmer refuge beneath the horizon.

Romance, not surprisingly, had arrived in our language, via a road that meandered through the Old French. So proprietary were the French of things romantic, this ancient definition of romans, meant something written in French. The word’s journey began, however, among the many roads leading from Rome: romanicus in Latin, meaning “in the Roman manner.” 

Indeed the Romance languages are so called for their derivation from the language of Rome; Spanish, French, and Italian being the most typically associated. Is it a coincidence that these languages have their homes in places thought to be romantic? A couple at a sidewalk cafe share glasses of sherry as the sun sets, turning the stones of old Madrid to gold. Newlyweds stroll along the Seine in the moonlight under the approving eye of the iconic tower, prince of the City of Lights. Star-crossed first love finds a boy and girl adrift in a gondola on a canal in Venice, embracing under the Bridge of Sighs as the evening bells toll. 

Left: “Play it again, Sam, for old time’s sake.” A reminiscing Ilsa Lund encourages Sam to play a long-lost love song she shares in memory with Rick Blaine.

Right: “I don’t want to be like everybody else!” Young Daniel expresses his passioned desire to live out the romantic gesture of embracing under the Bridge of Sighs with his sweetheart, Lauren.

According to Webster’s dictionary, the term romance began as a reference to medieval tales of heroism and chivalric love, often attenuating a spiritual quest. Out of this ancient meaning grew a reference to prose narratives that continue to this day to incorporate themes of heroic adventure and true love. In the movie, A Little Romance (1979), true love’s aspiration and the adventure undertaken in pursuit of it, struggle against a banal, cynical culture where relationships are entered into casually out of boredom.

A later usage of romance includes an emotional attraction to or aura of a heroic era, adventure, or calling. This definition sounds a bit riskier than walking a girl back home from the dance, promising to lasso the moon for her. And yet it is the hero’s willingness to risk the adventure to rescue, secure, protect the beloved that stirs the reader’s heart whether the story is set in bygone history or dystopian future. Indeed even in the darkest of stories, an element of romance always seems to engender a flicker of hope.

Romance in a lesser usage encompasses any short instrumental piece of music in the style of a ballad. How many a love story, from the famous to the anonymous, has found expression in a song that spoke uniquely to the lovers? What brings back Paris for Rick and Ilsa? Sam singing As Time Goes By, the cherished standard by Herman Hupfeld, simply accompanied on a painted, upright piano. And indeed as time has gone by, Casablanca remains a great romance because of those two young lovers the world will always wait for each time that song plays, but also for the heroic sacrifice of two small people, hope’s tiny flame fighting back encroaching darkness.

One definition I discovered in my search seemed out of place with the rest at first. Romance could mean something without basis in fact. Does fact, or reason for that matter, come into play when we fall in love? Does adventure require evidence alone or is its allure, at least in part, in what we believe is waiting out there to be discovered? Does romance require a kind of faith in what we cannot see? 

“Fools rush in where wise men never go, but wise men never fall in love. So how are they to know?” –Johnny Mercer

My Funny Valentine, written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for the musical, Babes in Arms in 1937, is a ballad associated with this time of year. The song catalogues every reason the beloved is unworthy in any conventional sense as an object of desire, and yet, the lover extols unwavering affection. It is what is unlovable that makes the subject so needful, and thus the recipient, of love. Perhaps therein is found the heroic reconciliation, to love without a basis in fact or reason.

Looking back on the passionate love my parents shared, the idea of romance, from its ancient roots through its long journey to each of its meanings, entails more than mere attraction or even the acquisition of the ideal mate. The everyday heroics of my father working long hours to provide for a family, of my mother facing the challenge of daily drudgery to secure moments of everyday romance, this was their quest for as long as they shared it. When she died, we buried his heart. Some years later we buried the rest of him. Their love, that overcame hardship, conflict, even death, still carries with it for me the essence of romance, one small candle flame burning ever bright against the cold and dark.