Long-lasting love is the real deal (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Long-lasting love is the real deal

8:27am Tuesday 14th February 2012 in Emma Clayton By Emma Clayton

As far as great love affairs go, it wasn’t exactly up there with Burton and Taylor, Cathy and Heathcliff or Ken and Deirdre.

“He didn’t want to slow dance so he dumped her,” declared my nephew Jack, referring to a love spat at the eight-to-14-year-olds village disco last Friday night.

Jack’s older brother, Sam, had decided that disposing of his ‘girlfriend’ was preferable to enduring the horror of dancing with her. Since Sam, who’s nearly 11, would rather eat cold tripe than even sit next to a girl, the split didn’t exactly break his heart.

Nor did it break hers, by the sound of it, since she promptly gave a Valentine card to his friend instead. Hopefully she remembered to cross Sam’s name out inside it first.

It starts in primary school, that fascination with love hearts and kisses. Chaotic games of kiss chase across the playground usually ended with some runny-nosed boy you wouldn’t look twice at wrestling you to the ground and planting a horrible slobbery kiss on your face.

Schoolgirl crushes start early too. I was still in Brownies when I dreamed of solving crimes with David Soul from Starsky and Hutch.

As a young teenager, my big crush was Sting – this was before the yoga, the lute and the light jazz – and an actor called Benedict Taylor from a TV drama, Barriers, that I watched on Sunday afternoons. To this day I have no idea what Barriers was about, but since I was in love with Benedict it didn’t seem to matter.

Eventually you grow up and realise that the world isn’t full of Benedicts. You’re expected to find a soulmate in a chaotic world where relationships come and go and marriages break down at an alarming rate.

While it’s quite sweet to see my nephews and niece discovering the fun of light romance and Valentine’s Day, I know that one day they’ll discover that real love isn’t all hearts and flowers.

It isn’t in those awful giant padded Valentine cards, the ostentatious, over-packaged bouquets, or twee teddy bears clutching satin love hearts.

I see love whenever my dad brushes my mum’s teeth, feeds her the meal he has cooked her, or cuts her fingernails.

In the cruel grip of dementia, she can’t do these things for herself. She can’t see or communicate with us, but she always knows when my dad is there, and nobody makes her smile like he does.

That’s the kind of love that lasts long after the flowers have wilted and the chocolates are past their sell-by date.