My little girl with her long brown hair, came running to me with flowers she had (illegally) picked at school.
Sometimes when I grieve for her and cry for her, I vivid memory come to me--- a day I was sitting out in the backyard and the school bus dropped her off in front of the house.
8 Simple Rules (originally known as 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter) is an American sitcom, originally starring John Ritter and Katey Sagal.
It debuted on ABC on September 17, 2002, and concluded on April 15, 2005.
The final series, its title trimmed down to 8 Simple Rules, ended in 2005, having won a cinematography Emmy in 2004.
Ritter was also nominated posthumously in 2004, losing to Kelsey Grammar for Frasier.
I had tried really hard up to that point to hold it back, honestly. I tried so hard to keep that fire going, to keep that emotion alight, but it got harder and harder. And what was even more interesting was that once I realized this on a conscious level, and started trying to find more opportunities to give, the more we both, almost intuitively, became lovey-dovey. From the excitement of dating a woman I felt like I could marry. Imagine a whole nation of people constantly chasing the emotions they had when they were dating. That’s a recipe for disastrous marriages; for a country with a 50% divorce rate; for adultery (the classic attempt to turn the fire back on); for people who do stay together to simply live functional, loveless marriages. How many people are in pain simply because they’ve been lied to.
I wanted to tell her on the first date, but I knew that would probably be weird. She kind of gave me this half-shy, half-amused smile. Like most Hasidic Jews (we both became religious later in life), our dating period lasted a very short time. I mean, how you can feel that burning love when you’re sitting at the table discussing how to use the last twenty dollars in your bank account? How can you feel it when you think it makes perfect sense to put your socks on the floor after you’re done with them, and she has this crazy idea that they need to go in the laundry basket? And now, as I’m a bit older and a bit more experienced with this relationship, I’ve finally come to realize something.
And that’s why my wife just gave me that half-smile. And now that I’ve tried to change the way I look at love, the more I become shocked at the messages of love I had gotten when I was younger.
And even when I let it out of my chest, it wasn’t love. Telling someone you love them doesn’t mean that you do.
Ritter, an icon in the world of American television for his star turn on Three's Company, died in 2003 from a misdiagnosed thoracic aortic aneurysm.