They love us in a different way.

I said that when someone asked what it was like to have a teenager.

I feel like we’ve lost a daughter.

My husband said that after a silent and inconsequential Sunday.

Just shut up.

I said that to her after a ride in the car yesterday.

And yet, there is love, so much love between us and it has gone nowhere! I am standing on the high bluff over death valley, infinite openness in all directions, stunned dumb in the emptiness, but I know the space before me is pure love. Pure love. Life grows here, even when we can’t see it. Refreshed in a cool night, fed by invisible rivulets. A whisper of sea sails five hundred miles across five mountain ranges, and the whisper is this.

They love us in a different way.

They love us in the space, the space that is nothing but love.

Love is not a feeling, not a thought, nothing given or got, not more or less. Not a precaution or warning, not a push or a prod. Not a reminder, not a teaching, not a performance. Love is not what I say and not what you hear. Not how was school how was the test what about homework what are you wearing wash your face eat your dinner pick up your shoes I don’t like her him that when if what did you do what did you say what about your terrible wonderful failure success happiness sadness what about me what about me what about me?

Love is the space between us. There is so much space.

What will you put into that space today, I ask myself before I hear the roar of my own echo.

Just shut up.

Reprinted with permission by Karen Maezen Miller. http://www.karenmaezenmiller.com