Creative Love (or, As the world burns)

How many different ways can you find to say I love you?

Every night we perform the same ritual, my husband William and I. We may be in separate rooms or sitting side by side in bed. But we are both intent on our phones, scrolling through GIFs and plotting message threads that we share with each other the following morning.

“I’m going in,” he says—that’s my cue to silence my phone. Late afternoon, I am at my desk. And the text notifications tumble in, coming in hot, one on top of the other, like popcorn in the microwave. Rapid fire followed by a pause. Sometimes the pause is long. Then the messages start coming in again.

“I’m on FIRE!” he says, stepping away from his phone. He asks if I need anything, leans over me for a kiss. Then he goes back into the bedroom, and the popcorn notifications start up again.

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William and I met as juniors in high school. It was 1969, and the schools in Wake Forest, NC, were desegregating in the slow, torturous way common to southern states as they labored to avoid complying with Brown v Board of Education. William and other Black friends came to my house for a party in December, which ended after one hour, when buckshot came crashing through the living room window. All of us hit the floor, and my dad cut the lights. William and I lay side by side, clinging to each other’s hand.

My family moved away in the spring of 1970 after my father graduated from seminary. I went to college in Kentucky before moving to New York City to pursue a singing career. William graduated from Wake Forest High School and attended University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to study physical therapy. After college, he moved to Florida to work. We lost touch with each other.

Every time I visited Wake Forest over the years, I asked after him. Everyone told me that he kept to himself, and I didn’t press. 

Then, in 2021, I began writing about the shooting and the aftermath. I asked someone to give him my phone number. To my happy surprise, I received a text: “Hi Karen…sorry i missed seeing u…live well and be the best version of yourself!…Wm. Lucas” (July 29, 2021)

After 52 years of not seeing or hearing from each other, we met face-to-face in 2022. On April Fools’ Day.

The spark between us was undeniable. We sat in the park across the street from his house, on the same side of a picnic table, half in, half out of the sun. The air was chilly, but the redbuds and dogwoods were beginning to bloom.

We talked for three hours without stop. We met again the following week at the same picnic table and talked for another three hours.

When I returned home to Georgia, 7+ hours away by interstate, our main form of communication was text. Neither of us likes to talk on the phone. The digital signals don’t land clear on aging eardrums. Plus, after talking for a while, the phone gets hot and burns my skin.

At first, we texted words only, then words with the occasional emoji: smiley faces blushing, smiley faces with hearts. Our messages ran the gamut from personal thoughts, to political opinions, to philosophical and theological ruminations that tested the limits of the medium.

Heart emojis of various colors sneaked in, along with astrological signs (Gemini for me, Aquarius for him). My nickname for him became The Unicorn—based on a friend’s comment that a sighting of William was “as rare as the sighting of a unicorn.” He began to call me Super K, and emojis of unicorns and stars flying through the night sky popped up next to lightning bolts, the sun, and different phases of the moon.

He was the first to use the yin-yang symbol. The black and white nestling against each other reminded me of the way I described my feelings for him over the years: ‘William curled up inside my heart and never left.’ Is he trying to tell me something? I thought.

Before long, the emojis were running rampant, like Cornish pixies sprung from a cage in a Harry Potter movie. 

In October, he texted, “I LOVE YOU and I am in LOVE WITH YOU…. My dearest Karen💚I am Seriously Thinking about someday asking you to MARRY ME😱🥰.”

I responded, “My dearest William 💚 I am seriously Thinking about someday saying Yes 😳😍💗.”

On Christmas Day in 2022, he proposed. And in January, we were married.

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The texting didn’t stop when I moved in. Au contraire. 

At first, we continued with words and emojis, throwing in the odd GIF to complete a thought or illustrate something we’d just said. As William used fewer and fewer words—because he thinks in pictures—the GIFs multiplied. I followed suit, and soon our threads were wall to wall GIFs. 

My approach has tended to be more scatter-shot—but William likes to match word GIFs with images in the same colors. He chooses color schemes up front, develops them to pull the whole thread together. Or he may make an abrupt color change for contrast and emphasis. 

Each of us has our favorite GIFs, the ones we send again and again. The challenge becomes, How do we do this every night, seven nights a week, without getting repetitive?

I think Mr. Lucas will agree with me that the inclusion of certain messages is mandatory:

• I love you (including variations: I love you so much, I love you to the moon and back, I love you with all my heart, etc.); and
• Kiss me.

(We also like to include GIFs made by the group Lucas and Friends, for what I hope are obvious reasons.) 

The trick is to find a new way into each thread. We write whole scenes—about failing technology or forgetting what day it is, the weather or doing the laundry on laundry day. 

Or we return to a simple ‘Good morning’ and ‘Happy [whatever day of the week it is].’

On our weekly celebration of Slug Sunday Funday, GIFs about slugs are de rigueur. And every month we celebrate our ‘anniversary,’ because—well, why not, and also because we are both in our early 70s, time is short, and nothing is guaranteed.

Now, William is experimenting with negative space, inserting GIFs that are black boxes, square or rectangular. There is no end to his creativity!

We spend hours every night. He creates his thread first, starting early while I’m still at my desk. While I’m playing with mine, he sits with his long legs outstretched, reading news articles and groaning his outrage. I lie back against my pillow and drape my leg across his. 

If I laugh, he gives me the side-eye.

“Being clever, are we?” he asks.

“Trying to,” I answer.

I’ve discovered over the course of three years that it is better if I go into the GIF collections without a fixed idea of what I want to say. I can trust that something I see will spark an idea for a story line or another way in, after which I’m off and running.

At the end of the day, William deletes the old thread and begins the new one. I hang onto them longer—I’m the pack rat in our marriage. I can’t help wishing I could find a way to preserve them.

But part of their beauty is their impermanence. They are like Tibetan sand paintings: labored over for hours and then swept away. 

It is a reminder that every day we create our love new every morning, even while the world burns.

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You can also find me at kbryantlucas.substack.com.