Love eclipsed

Once for about a week I went around asking people what had made them fall in love with the partners they were with. Some people had an instant answer, others couldn't exactly say why, one friend said she wasn't sure she had ever loved her husband (they're still married). I've been in love twice in my life, and I'm not sure the first time should count, since it was in high school and was no doubt hormonally induced. Or is that was makes love at any age? The second time was when I was in my early 30s. I thought I had met my soulmate. Unlike my first love, this time it seemed like the two of us shared the same interests. Except that he started developing other interests and eventually left me for someone else. It took several years for me to get over it. And then, with somewhat bizarre timing, both Tino and Lorne called me when I was 40. I had no interest in meeting Tino again. This was kind of strange, since usually I'm pathologically curious about other people's lives. I realized though that I didn't want to disinter my past. So when he called me again and left a message saying he was going to be passing through town and did I want to meet for coffee, I never returned his call. Lorne was a different matter. There was still some unfinished business. He had moved to Ottawa and I hadn't seen or talked to him for 5 years. We met for breakfast, and I got to say everything that I hadn't said to him when he left. The oddest part of our meeting was realizing that I felt nothing for him anymore. I was with someone else at the time, someone who I had met through Lorne. They had been in the same men's group. (I worked my way through ¾ of that men's group, which isn't as bad--or good, depending on your viewpoint--as it sounds as there were only 4 of them, not 8, 12, 16, 20 or some other multiple of 4.) But I don't think being with someone else was why my love vanished. It's still a mystery to me how that happened.

I'm not sure why I started thinking about this. Maybe it was watching the moon turn that haunting shade of orange-red last night, capturing the light from all the world's sunrises and sunsets. It doesn't happen often, and when it does we may not see it. And then slowly the moon turns a brilliant white again, still beautiful, but cold. The show's over. I turn my back on the universe and go to bed.