Hold me. Thrill me. Keep me.

I want an old-fashioned romance. Where we are the stars in a black and white film that moves the audience to sentimental, gushing tears. And the movie tickets will be handed out with (colour-coordinated) tissue boxes. The soundtrack must be played by a full orchestra (complete with harp). And will feature the likes of Marvin Gaye and (hark) even a little Anita Baker.  The illustrated novel version of our great romance will have butterflies and bunnies in the corners. And this will somehow seem perfectly acceptable. Oprah will come out of retirement just to add our publication to her book club. And we will graciously send her an autographed copy (and we won’t release this fact to the media.) Mills and Boon will blush at our midnight magic making (ahem). And the home videos celebrities make (and don’t intentionally release) will suddenly seem boring and amateurish. 

Hold me.

Bring me flowers at random, with a hand-written note that says “hi”. Not store bought, some yellow coloured stuff you plucked from the side of the road. And I won’t even recognize that my most-beautiful-flowers-I’ve-ever-seen weeds, still have the roots attached (and make me sneeze). Make me a double CD of love songs that tell me how you feel about me in B flat and E minor. And even ten years from now I won’t tell you that CD’s are outdated and I can only play them at the museum’s coffee shop on the world’s last remaining disk-man.

Thrill me.

Bring me doughnuts (chocolate covered with rainbow sprinkles) when I'm down.  Open the car door for me (be advised central locking does not count). Hold my hand in public. Touch my check softly with the back of your hand. Kiss my wrist sometimes when you greet me. Clip a funny comic and hand it to me, so you can be there to see when I smile. Tell me when I look pretty, (this should be often). Know when not to tell me when I don’t look my best. (Good luck with that). Hold me close in your arms to warm me when we go swimming in a too-chilly ocean with a soon-setting sun. Spend an hour in a hallmark store to find me the perfect card and on the envelope write “I think I wrote this in our future and sent it back to this very moment”.  (Yeah, I so love the corny stuff).

Keep me.

I don’t need all of it all the time, I don’t even need much of it most of the time, but I do want some of it some of the time. And here’s the thing, we all fall short. (Seriously.) So just in case you end up falling short, give it all you’ve got. Try for all of it, all of the time, if you fall short a little and make it most of the time, perfect. If you give it your all, all the time, fall short a lot and make it just a few times, still perfect.  But if you don’t give your all, and the half ditched attempt falls short, you fail. (Pause for effect). Catastrophic failure.

Thing is, you’re off to a good start (cue cheerleaders). Well you're reading a blog about love so you must be in the least, interested. I’m rooting for you because I want it too, a great romance, old-fashioned though it may be. We can even make each other a promise, hold me, thrill me and keep on keeping me and I’ll hold, you, thrill you and keep on keeping you. Because that’s all we want in any relationship isn’t it? To be held a little, thrilled a little and kept for long. And even perhaps, (if we're lucky), a few doughnuts and perhaps an old-fashioned romance.