February 14, 2024- I read, on the back of one of my baby pictures,of all that coursed through the young woman’s heart, as she gazed upon her first born child-yours truly.        Thirty years after that photo was taken, a winsome, effervescent young woman came up to me, and started talking about the event where were both in attendance.            Forty-three years after that night of rain and snow, a winsome, effervescent and mature woman came over to me and began talking of her family, smiling broadly with pride in her daughter.

It’s said that one only falls in love with three people, in this life: The love who looks right; the hard love and the love that lasts. This theory takes in an adolescent crush, as its notion of first love, but leaves out the obvious person: One’s opposite sex parent. My mother was my first love, and set the ideal for anyone who came along later. I learned my code of conduct, love of learning and attention to detail, from that diligent and sometimes exacting woman. A boy sees, hears and feels the love of his mother, above all the other females in his young life. I didn’t always listen to her, and bristled, as often as I acquiesced, to her dictums and rules. A man ponders, internalizes, and often passes on to his own progeny, those same precepts-along with what was learned from his father.

I had my share of adolescent crushes, none of which came to anything, and as an emerging, but still immature, thirty-year-old I started to feel something stirring within myself-after living a hard twelve years of struggle with alcohol dependency, a fairly obvious place on the autism spectrum and a pretty serious level of self-loathing. That stormy night, in December, 1980, I came face-to-face with the woman who would be both the love who looked right and the hard love. We worked through a lot, raised a child, and raised each other, past a lot of lingering adolescence. She brought a renewed Faith in the Divine, into my world, and refined my idea of unconditional love. It could be said that she made a man out of me-and certainly impelled me to cast out my lingering demons. That was a process, though, that lasted beyond her own time in this world, and caused me some grief, for a few years after death did us part.

The third love is the one we don’t see coming. I certainly was taken aback, having resigned myself to living out my years surrounded by friends, but essentially alone. Yet, there she was, captivating me more than anyone had, in a good many years-and certainly as much as Penny had, on that night in Zuni. This time, we were part of a group, which went to some places together and, right up to the day I left their company, did not consciously strike me as an agent of the change that was to come. I was cavalier about when I would come back to visit them. Yet, underneath it all, feelings began to bubble to the surface. Before a month had passed, from my return to Home Base, I knew I was in deep.

The love we don’t see coming is said to be the love that lasts. I personally think all three last. I will always be looking out for my mother, as long as she is alive, even though she is safe and secure-and 2,655 miles away. I will always be praying for the well-being and advancement of Penny’s soul, even as her spirit continues to guide me. I will continue to communicate, often daily, with the woman for whom I feel a welling of love, and carefully build a lasting friendship, based on mutual respect and devotion.

All three are strong, independent souls, capable of fiercely defending their loved ones, their values and their own persons. That strength, independence and ferocity, as I mentioned yesterday to a distant friend, are what bound me to my mother and drew me to Penny, and to K. Only a strong woman can truly bring out the strength in a man.

So I wish my third love a Happy Valentine’s Day, and can only hope to be as valued in her heart, as she is in mine.

Here’s Tommy James, offering a take on the notion.