I’ve kept to Noah’s directive for passengers aboard the Ark and sailed 50 times around an enormous spinning, shining nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma with my First Mate. Love is a lot like sunshine. Sunshine is what happens when within a tiny tad of mass a bunch of heavier and lighter elements are forced to fuse together. Their union creates a tremendous amount of nuclear energy in the form of light and heat that shapes our lives. Sunshine fuels love.

Sustaining love for over half a century requires a great deal of energy that must endure long after the big bang. People whose relationships dissipate often describe feeling that there wasn’t the right chemistry to fuel love. Blame breakups on sunshine. The sun creates energy and energy makes everything work. Being human, each person requires food – plants and animals- as fuel to energize our emotions and make relationships work. Everything we eat is essentially a smorgasbord of chemical matter that is the product of energy harvested from the sun. Some things, like mushrooms – who do not mine energy from darkness –   use energy from other living things that previously harvested their energy from sunlight. That’s one reason why most couples rely on the support – energy – of close friends of family. It takes the right chemicals – or if you’re on WW, the right diet and movement – to keep love burning strong. Love is consistent with laws of the universe, as Einstein explained, nuclear fusion happens when stuff is subjected to great pressure and heat which creates blinding energy.

Sunshine itself is as blind and out of control as a hormonally surcharged teenager’s first crush. The sun mindlessly absorbs a forest’s moisture to the point of a spontaneous combustion that leaves behind an acrid landscape. Sunlight energizes a scorched patch of earth with the power to thrive again much in the same way that broken hearts heal to love again. The sun melts polar ice caps and 7 11 slushies during the same day just like the warmth of an embrace soothes a soul and brightens our spirit.

 Some might wonder whether two elements that come together with the pressure and heat of love can sustain enough energy over 50 years to keep burning brightly. Yes, they can, though it takes a lot energy and to keep a hunk of burning love aflame for that long.  Love needs to be protected when it’s just a small flicker of warmth sputtering in the wind. Every now and then an ember of love needs a breath of fresh air to ignite. While our love burns a bit slower it’s not scorched and hasn’t cooled off.

Nothing thaws my heart as powerfully as my first mate and crew. We’ve enjoyed a half a century of solar cruising. Like all of the twosomes on the Ark we did our fair share of multiplying during the first legs of our journey, though Noah never seemed to heed Sheriff Brody’s advice to get a bigger boat as our tribe increased.

I’ve always said that I love my family more than sunshine which is contrary to logic. They are sunshine. Sunshine is energy. Energy is everything.  It’s true. Love is sunshine.

Happy 50th Anniversary, George.