Just an Ordinary Love Story

"holding hands" by hello_kitty_ld via photobucket.com

This is a love story. Not an earth-rending, commandment-shattering, Romeo-and-Juliet kind of tale, but the story of an ordinary miracle—the kind that takes place daily, all over the world.

Leslie and Chris (not their real names) met about 15 years ago, around the same time I met my husband. Leslie was a friend and colleague of my husband’s, and we used to hang out from time to time. Leslie was 50-ish at the time, and was just emerging from the cocoon of mourning and readjustment that follows widowhood. Jim had died nearly two years prior, after a long, ugly illness through which Leslie had nursed him.

Chris spotted Leslie at a party, and was intrigued. Chris made the first move, and although Leslie was a bit taken aback by the age difference—Chris is nearly 15 years younger—and felt unready to enter the dating maelstrom after more than a decade of monogamy followed by two years of caretaking, there was enough mutual attraction to ensure that phone numbers were exchanged. A first date soon followed, and with it, a romance unfolded slowly and cautiously, based on shared interests, similar sensibilities and values, and appreciation for and enjoyment of their two natures, distinct, yet complementary.

Sacrifices were made. Jobs were jiggered and re-juggled; houses sold, bought, and sold again; old friendships waned, as they tend to when personally seismic events occur. Chris had always wanted kids, but Leslie was too old to start a new family, and neither felt equal to the special challenges that adoption can bring. Chris makes the most of his enjoyment of other people’s children—an arrangement that has benefited my own enormously.

Thus, Leslie and Chris settled into life together. When Leslie took early retirement, they were finally able to travel together to the many places Chris’s job took them. When Leslie’s mother was dying, Chris was the soft, yet rock-steady place that Leslie could lean into when the task of caring once again for a loved one withering through long illness weighed heavy. Chris was Leslie’s porch light when the burden of grief threatened to engulf.

The couple wore blue—both of them—when they were finally married on a lovely August day in the garden they each delighted in bringing to bursting life each year. Because, as they said, they had everything they needed and most of what they wanted, Chris and Leslie requested no gifts, but suggested anyone so inclined could make a donation to a favorite charity, if they felt the need to mark the day.

I danced with my son that day, and explained to him what I believe marriage means. He listened, distracted, then wandered over to the cake table to indulge in a kind of love a six-year old can understand: chocolate.

Leslie and Chris. Chris and Leslie. Just an ordinary love story.

Why, then, should I want to write it?

Because, Gentle Reader, this past November 7,001,084 California voters decided that in this love story—and thousands more like it—the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Because the parts, in this case, are chromosomes, and the sum, two X and two Y.

I don’t understand. I’ve read the arguments, but still, I don’t understand. Why are Leslie and Chris, who met, fell in love and made a life together on the same trajectory as my husband and I, based on the same foundations, undertaking the same commitment, somehow less-than? Can someone please, please explain it to me in simple terms so I can explain it to my son?