“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet” – Emily Dickinson
This is Love Month. Such a loaded word. Some languages have many words for love. Ours has one. The word that we used as teenagers, with the “o” shaped like a heart to describe our racing pulse and new-found obsession with the object of our desire, is the same word that is used to describe connection with the Almighty and car preferences. That’s a lot for four letters to take on. But, perhaps one word is the best option, since “love” includes more possibilities than a million words could cover. Might as well stop at a single word and increase the definitions.
I love my children and I love pizza. Really? I can describe both what is most precious to me and a ubiquitous food (no matter how enticing), using the same exact word, as though the experiences were somehow comparable. It is mind boggling.
It just so happened that I married the one who made my heart leap at 17-and still does (although nowadays, sometimes heart leaps can be a little worrying.) I know that’s weird, same partner, 35 years, both of us still scheming for our next date. Still wildly in love, only better. Because the love I feel now is less about me, and more about what it means to share a life, with all its possibilities, with another who is definitely not me.
The love of friends. The magic of feeling that connection, souls touching, and common threads brings. “That person gets me!” is a feeling of elation that never gets old. Some I thought I loved, some I truly loved (but we still parted ways); some I have loved since forever, even though I rarely see them.
Through my younger years, I thought friend-love was one experience, with one set of rules. “BFF”, as my teenager would say. It’s not. People I couldn’t imagine my life without for one minute turned out to be passersby.
Others weave in and out, sometimes with decades in-between, holding a piece of me like a bungee cord. New friends become close much faster, now that I know myself better and am no longer grabbing on for security and permanence; we’re happy to share what love we can and throw out the expectations.
I love my children. At first, such a selfish thing for me, becoming a mother. My needs, my unmolded clay, meant to be my life’s accomplishment, pouring my all into not being like my parents. One giant re-do of the universe, unraveling the mistakes of the past and producing perfection. Ignoring my misguided ideals, perfection, and love prevailed. Not because of what I did, but because of who they are. It turned out that letting them loose in the world was the job. With them, it was really (except for the sleep deprivation) so easy.
Heady with that and wanting more, we added another – a spicy sweet tiger, not home-grown, thrust at me into a grubby hallway in China at the age of nine-and-three-quarters; terrified, speechless, angry. Here, I was introduced to a new kind of love – one that hasn’t come easily, and definitely hasn’t been about me. This hope of love soon morphed into an obligation, and then hung on by the sheer force of will. While I was consumed by survival and disillusion, love began growing into its own beautiful self; another one that I have had no part in molding. This love was a decision, not a feeling or a quest. No hearts and butterflies; instead surprisingly strong and steady. Different and humbling.
The love I feel for my mother and grandmother, both gone for many years, has changed. I now see the sad young woman I loved out of fear and fantasy, but never knew, in a different light. Effort is no longer necessary when I think of how her years of young motherhood compare to mine, and that her life was cut short, at the age at which mine began to open up.
The grandmother I adored as a child is even larger in my life now as I piece together the challenges she faced and tremendous spirit that kept her going. Always accepting, always there; always believing in me. With every year, she grows dearer to me, as I know better who she was.
I have passed through many ages one day at a time. And at some point, it finally dawned on me that I wasn’t getting any of them again. This is it. Love who and what you can, how you can, with whatever that means, in the moment you are in. It’s your only chance.
Even when they aren’t loveable, even when they hurt you or make your day go sour, even when they may leave soon and never reappear, or when they are not following your idea of what it should be and feel like. There is no other choice that makes it exciting to wake up in the morning, and face rain or disappointment, or a wrinkled body that no longer does quite what you’d like it to. But with love (picture a heart shaped “o”), it’s always something worth smiling about. You never can tell when it will surprise you.