It's that time of the year again; there's a chill in the wind, you can hear the melody of Christmas jingles on the radio and the slight glow of twinkle lights only adds to the warmth that the holidays bring with them. Like every other year on Thanksgiving eve, I find myself on a plane. Invariably, as the plane begins it's final descent towards the vast maze of bright lights, my thoughts turn to reflect on the year gone by, my upcoming long weekend and random reflections on my life. Prime stars in this reflection have been my family, living so far away, something as mundane as turning in my time at work and my premature planning for the next round of travel. This year things are only slightly different...
A part of me often wished, in the recent past, that I could turn back some cycles of time..Such a wonderful time in one's life..when one could still believe in the magic of Disney, hope for the happily ever afters, and enjoy Mills and Boons without being poked in the ribs by reality to tell you what a fool you are being.Time is a cruel teacher. As you grow up you realize that Disney, Mills, Boons and their troupe were in fact, delusional and neurotic. Certain filmmakers and scriptwriters could be the presidents of this del-neurotic club.We are slowly pre-programmed into believing everything should happen a certain way, not the least of which is falling in love. Scores of advertisers, valentine's day teddy bear and card makers and movie makers had together found in me, a really tough cookie; a complete pariah to the concept of love. Well that can't be true..I love my family,my friends, I love chocolates,I love dogs, I love splashing into water and the high of hitting a forehand winner across the court. But I digress..the point I am trying to make, quite inarticulately, is that all this love is made out to be irrelevant in our modern day lives. There is an entire industry dedicated to focusing and might I mention, obsessing about meeting the love of your life, getting married, getting divorced and the "complications" in relationships. Someone once told me that things are only as complicated as you make them out to be..I wonder..
The mini-plane has screeched to a halt. I find myself standing and inhaling the fresh , cold Ohio air as I impatiently wait for my cabin luggage.(yeah the mini-plane overhead bins can't take cabin luggage except for mini purses).I see cold white wisps leave my mouth as I take deep breaths, reminding me just how much I had been 'Californicated' in the last 3 years. My heavy, warm jacket has let me down as I shiver and escape to the warmth of the Columbus airport.
For a long time I believed that 'love' was merely a trick played on human kind for propagation of species.Secretly though, I used to wonder if I would meet my 'Mister Right', or whether I was even the marrying kind.I was an extremely happy single camper. I have a great circle of friends, wonderful family, a job I love and loads of great places to eat and shop in. Does a person really want more? Yet, there was this unyielding pressure to couple up..The fundamental theorem of arithmetic establishes the central role of primes in number theory: A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself..Since I had up until now failed to find any tall,funny, understanding , love-worthy divisors, was I then a prime living in a world of composites? I'd done my round of dating, my round of flirting, my round of pretending to be interested, and the more I tried to couple up, the more I loved my 'prime' status. In fact, I secretly celebrated knowing I would never have to deal with the complication that accompanied the composition.
I find myself dragging my bag towards the exit. The warmth in the airport has nothing to do with the heating mechanisms. I see blonde cherubs rushing to meet their grandparents, children flying in to meet their parents, there was this high pitched filly who galloped across the baggage claim to hug her stud..squeals , hugs, kisses and slaps on the backs being exchanged all around. I suspect God created small towns and their airports to remind one of the importance of human relationships and what an important stimulant they are in defying the theory of primes. The city girl in me was slowly coming to terms with it..
A few months back I met my multiplication factor. Of course, like all primes, I put up a natural resistance to becoming a composite. Mark Haddon once said “Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.” I was certainly not adhering to any patterns. I didn't think I was in love, in fact I refused to acknowledge that it might be a possibility , my relationship programming showing how strongly it was ingrained in me. It refused to accept anything other than pre-programmed inputs. The rules stated that we had to be engaged in frivolous flirting for an endless period of time , followed by fights and complications involving the guy being a jerk, his family being difficult and the girl being a bitch, followed by make up procedures, involving high outflow of cash and great influx of gifts; followed by some dramatic changes in bodily functions and mental stability: increased heartbeat, sleepless nights , hearing violins when you see him and the likes. The very strong prime that I was, I followed none of these patterns leaving me quite confused. That's when I realized that Disney, Mills, Boons and our beloved filmmakers had followed the classic theory of arithmetic and excluded the primes in their ever after patterns. So I decided to write my own as I figured out some things..
You can fall in love with no specific pre-requisites. You can fall in love with no specific time frame. No, you don't hear violins, and you need not have bodily malfunctions like increased heartbeat or sleepless nights; in fact you might have a dreamless sleep because you are so much at peace. The guy or his family do not have to be difficult. When he goes out of his way to fly in from across the country every other week, don't question what you are doing wrong..or right..when his friends and family call you and talk to you as if they've known you for ages, when you haven't even met them, don't question the digression from pattern. When they make you feel so welcome, enough to make you misty eyed, don't question excessive emotion. When friends ask you if you are moving too fast, if it feels right, in all probability the rules of speed in relationship don't apply to you either. When he goes away, you may not hear sad music and you may not spasm from grief but your mind may be preoccupied with the calendar dates noting when he'll be back or if he's found time to get something to eat. When he lands up at your doorstep in the middle of the night to surprise you, you may not ham with excessive facial expressions..but your mind might go blank with the thought that someone cares so much about you.There may not be gifts and flowers, but maybe they don't matter as much as air tickets.Finally, when he asks you to marry him, your entire courtship may not flash before your eyes in the form of a slow montage of all the lovey dovey times, but you might just say yes, or as I did in my case " Hell yeah!" without even thinking,because you already knew the answer...as did he.
I find myself standing at the curb like every other Thanksgiving eve. But things are only slightly different this year. I am not in a big city with too many lights and too many cabs around me. I am in a flyover state with happy people all around me.I am not hailing a cab..but waiting for my +1 to roll up and pick me up.I am incredibly happy , genuinely happy. The bright flash from my left hand reminds me that I was also no longer a prime. In between the pattern digressions, and the breaking of the code, I had finally succumbed to being composite. I realized that there is a concept such as love..maybe not as defined by Disney, or M&B, but it does exist. Sure, it has been clouded and polluted in recent times with concepts such as personal space, careers, I, me and mine concepts, but if we choose to wipe the cynicism from our eyes, we see that Love, actually, is all around, and the twinkle lights can do little right now to match the sparkle on my finger or the one in my eyes.