When Ted and I were at Anglin Lake on the weekend, our son, Nat, and his girlfriend, Ellen, stayed at our house with our dogs. When we got home last night, Nat and Ellen helped us unload the car and then we put together a northern dinner of pickerel, wild rice bread and salad. As we cooked, Ellen put on Michael Buble singing “The Way You Look Tonight”. Nat and Ellen are both young and beautiful and to see them dancing in the kitchen to an old standard, wholly absorbed in one another, was a joy.
Over the weekend, Ted and I spent a happy evening with another good couple. Alice and Jack are in their late 80’s. The lodge where we stayed has been their home and their livelihood for most of their married life. They still put in full days at Land of the Loon. In the summer, Alice runs the store and the little coffee shop; Jack, who knows everything there is to know about loons, takes people out on the lake to teach them how to respect these shy and beautiful birds. In the winter, Alice and Jack do what needs to be done to make their guests feel welcome.
It’s impossible not to see the pleasure Alice and Jack take in one another. Like all people in a good relationship, they catch one another’s eye when a joke is told or a comment resonates. But as I watched them I thought of Saint-Exupery’s words about love. “Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
Last night when we heard the sad news that an old friend died. I thought again of Saint-Exupery’s words. Our friend, Harvey, had enjoyed a long and loving marriage with Helen. For a lifetime they had looked outward together in the same direction. Last summer when we had dinner with them, Harvey was already failing. It was difficult for him to keep up with the conversation, but Helen’s eyes still travelled to her husband when a joke was told or a comment resonated.
Helen understood the larger meaning of the lyrics to “The Way You Look Tonight”.