Today I taught writing. One of my students objected to my suggestion he send his best story to a contest, saying slyly that I had said romance was out of fashion. He had inadvertently written a rather brilliant scene in which a wife locks herself in the bedroom to save her husband from catching the plague from which she will shortly die.
"That's not exactly romance," I said. "That's one of the funny things about marriage."
And then I laughed because one of the funny things about marriage is that, after a point, it isn't really romantic, except once in awhile, or in unusual circumstances. If you're both happy, it's better than romance. It's like finding your other shoe when you are already wearing one shoe.
Update: I admit that there are better similes for this. It's more like being trees side-by-side in a forest.
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