The Romeo & Juliet song

There's a guilty pleasure I just have to confess. And then explain.

Not that there isn't already a list. Belgian chocolates. High heels. Coastal Georgia. Guys in uniform. The movie "Gladiator." Tropical drinks with little paper umbrellas. Down pillows and flannel sheets...as long as the air conditioning is still on.

But this is a chapter, and a phenomenon, all its own.

I'm a grown woman over forty...and I like the Taylor Swift song "Love Story." There I said it. Out loud.

You know the song. You can't possibly escape it on the radio. It's the one where she's Juliet and he's Romeo and it's got pre-feminist-to-the-point-of-Neanderthal lyrics like "Romeo save me..."

Good God, I thought, the first dozen times I heard it...or heard enough of it to change the channel with a cringe. How utterly dopey! How ridiculous. How unreal. How...godawfully uncomplicated and fairy-tale and unconnected to the realities of love and relationships. And for heaven's sake, didn't anyone read to the end of the Romeo and Juliet saga and realize that the star-crossed lovers died?? So much for teenage romance!

So that would be the starting point of the journey to actual affection. Active dislike, morphing into something else. Just like real life. Or any number of romantic movie comedies, such as "You've Got Mail." Okay, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had a lot to do with making that one work, but still...it's a formula for romance on the big screen. Even Harrison Ford got to be loathed by Anne Heche in "Six Days Seven Nights"...and nobody doesn't like Harrison Ford.

It was the beat that caught me first. Rhythmic and pulsing and steady and smooth (relentless, even), like the slap of a long plastic jumprope on a sidewalk during summer vacation. Three girls killing time on a warm afternoon, the jumper in the middle always changing, the rhythm as consistent as crickets chirping. Equilibrium as perfectly maintained--despite the occasional shift in positions--as a gyroscope spinning on a picnic table. I found myself humming along, even after I changed the channel. And then I quit changing the channel altogether, and looked at it through a new window.

Everything that drove me nuts about it at first--especially the cloying fairy-tale neediness of it--became a window into being a teenager again. Back in the day when all you could see was what you wanted, absolutely, with all your heart, right now, with no thought for the future other than the credo that love could conquer all.

Remember those days? Mine, I'm sure, were fueled by a childhood spent reading too many romantic suspense novels full of dukes and other noblemen waiting to rescue their damsels in distress and whisk them off to a life of happily-ever-after. It took me years to outgrow that template.

Well, by the time you've passed thirty-nine, you've grown up and figured out that no matter how grand love may be, it doesn't always conquer all. And it certainly doesn't get the toilet fixed or the living room painted or the dog taken to the vet. Real life is full of real frustrations, big and small, and tender eurphoric feelings sometimes have to get put on hold for just a wee bit of time while you run into the corner gas station to buy a carton of milk. Because you just can't live on love all the time...groceries and utilities and clean laundry are usually involved too.

But...

I've realized that when I listen (and even...ulp...sing along to) "Love Story," I don't have to think about real life at all. It takes me right back to being sixteen and absolutely blissfully ignorant of the myriad disappointments and compromises that real life will offer later. By the time the song wraps up with "Romeo" on bended knee telling our heroine to go buy a wedding dress because he loves her and that's all he needs to know...I get a quick fix of bottomless yearning fulfilled and a "when dreams come true" instant that's about as real as the Disney version of Cinderella, and just as much fun. Reality be damned for just a minute!

And as I've learned just not that long ago, those magic moments aren't entirely lost when your teen years are left behind. I had one of my own in the middle of a gardening project at my house with a man whose pickup truck and leather tool belt and love of blooming things beat out any central casting figure of a prince on a white horse.

One Sunday morning, after the plants were in and the mulch was spread and green things were watered and beginning to take root, the subject came up over coffee of how to create a footpath through the flower garden, which was rather deep in places. I, cursed with character flaws of ambivalence and a pathological fear of commitment and absolutely no imaginary sense of the visual, balked at every suggested solution. Hedged, even, at the idea of going window shopping. For rocks.

So we took the truck out to a local quarry anyway just for something to do, with the fig-leaf of understanding that there were always supplies for his own place that he could buy and therefore it wouldn't be a trip wasted. We walked, hand in hand in the sunshine, over pretty displays of granite and marble and slate and bricks. And when we reached a stretch of red Arizona sandstone, I could suddenly see my heart's desire. And imagine it among my flowers.

I still hemmed and hawed, pricing it out, trying to figure what I could afford, wondering at the enormity of the project, wondering whether I should go back home and think on it for a while longer. Like another week or two. And then Prince Charming cast his two cents into the pot, roughly rounded up to the fact that this was exactly what I wanted, we had the truck with us, it was a gorgeous day, and we might as well go for it.

I still remember the joy bursting in my heart as I threw my arms around him at that point and kissed him in the sunlight somewhere between the limestone and the crushed lava, casting caution to the wind and simply saying "yes!"

As blissfully simple and momentarily satisfying as the ending in "Love Story"? You betcha!