Love Equals Money ?

No doubt this will make me unpopular. Certainly I've been unpopular before.

But.

I'm hearing a lot these days about folks out of work and about the impact of such losses on family, on love. I'm feeling the quiet out there and also the quiet within, where work at my own marketing communications firm has slowed considerably and projects that were once sure things have been thrown off of their tracks. I get worry. I get wondering what tomorrow will bring. I get sitting down at 4 AM with the finances and the taxes and the bills and jiggering things around to make the many pieces fit. Simpler meals, more carefully made. Shoes worn until the soles are left behind on the pave. A house that feels emptier as less comes in—but also roomier, perhaps, also more accommodating.

But what I don't get (and here's where you start to hate me) is the level of animosity I'm finding, in some places, toward those who have lost their jobs. Spouses furious with spouses. Disappointments stomped out in public. Quotes like this one, found today in a Newsweek story titled, "Men Will Be Men:" When money goes, love flies out the window. Spoken by an interviewed man clearly living a whole lot of char and hurt.

Does it have to be this way? Must love be contingent on funds? Can't love also be the time that is spent just being together, finding a way? We're not going to get these days back. Not ever. Can we really put love on hold until the coins start clattering in?

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Streetside Conversation

Yesterday I started walking toward the intersection of activity that is our town. (It being a gorgeous day, and not one ounce bitter.)

Through the doors of the movie theater busted out a young couple—I put them both at seventeen—and her look said it all. Her look said, I cannot believe you did that again and this time I just may not forgive you. He was turned toward her—crooked, pleading, what did I do? why are you mad? why won't you at least hold my hand?—and then, all of a sudden, his expression broke into something huge and grateful, something approximating understanding. "Is that why you are mad?" he started saying. "That's it? That's the reason?" He was practically dancing now, he was going on with all the antics of relief, and the more he crowed over his exquisite epiphany, the angrier she got. Now her expression was all, You idiot, why didn't you get that in the first place, and will you stop your jumping up and down?, and why would you think just understanding is enough?; understanding is nothing; you better fix it, while his kept being, I get it, I get it, I don't have to guess anymore, I'm done, I'm free.

Seventeen, I thought. Seventeen. And there it is. The future in script.

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