The china settings--your finest. The delicate brew--tap water. Pink Bear prefers milk while she sings the Teddy Bear waltz and Scrappy Kitty kinda comes because she has to. At four years old, your tea party hosting prowess is unmatched in Imagination Land and any spare afternoon is likely to transform a toy box and mother’s closet into a full costume party for you and a few of your closest stuffed friends. You provide napkins, paper hats, lemonade, sunshine and as any professional-tea-party-hosting-four-year-old-romantic would know, the one ever empty guest setting. In Imagination Land it is tragedy if Love knocks on the door with no place to sit. Besides, teddy bears really do make sucky guests what with that tea-sipping thing and all.

This weekend, in another fairytale land some twenty two years later, I sat at the bride and groom’s feet. A priestess evoked the elements and a minister pronounced the union holy just as a lazy Las Vegas sunset made silhouettes out of Red Mountains and a moon appeared quietly over our shoulders. Dear Regina and I, emotional equals, held each other in the grass sobbing a symphony for the proof we both ever seek and were now witnessing—love like this exists. Later at their Las Vegas hotel room, at a very private after-after wedding party, husband and wife restored marriage’s good name and gave lessons on how to love without boundries—how freeing commitment can be. I knew I had been saving that empty setting for something.

Knock, knock. “Oh, hello, Love. Would you like one lump or two?”

The lumps do not matter. Love harder.

On the road it is easy to forget that love like this exists. You get comfortable in your king sized bed in your spotless hotel room doing only what you like. You meet a dozen new friends every week, all of whom are very special people, but whom you know you will not see for another year at best, and in the mean time you will have met another dozen new friends each week until that next meeting arrives. You learn how to not make promises, not speak about a future, not lead love on. Not let love in.

But what if you are tired of waiting to be some hypothetical perfect human in some hypothetical perfect situation? What if love does exist like you always dreamed at four years old? What if when you hear knocking, you elegantly and adultly open the door and pour a cup of your finest. You do not question how long your guest can stay. You do not ask for why they are here.

Let us not delay gratification a moment longer. Let us invite Love in for a moment or forever. Let us look in the eyes, let us sing from the heart, and let us offer as many lumps of sugar as Love will take.

Grown up tea is sweeter than a four year olds dreams.

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