Love Holds Me

Love….love…love…what do I know of love?

I thought when I was younger that love would be this big thing with a neon sign pointing “Here! This is it! You’ve arrived! There is vacancy!” But no, love is that nonstop daily reality of just being. Love for my partner, love for my sons, love for my parents and brother.

This love looks messy and complicated – no clear neon sign, no cupids or rainbows or unicorns. Love is gritty, it looks like being up in the middle of the night when the pain of being awake with my son is just too much to take. Love looks like being told that my mothering hasn’t made the impression I wanted it too and I’ve missed the mark so many times. Love looks like being caught in a moment of shame and realizing that my mother, in her love, is doing the shaming. Love is letting go of someone, seeing after 20 years that they haven’t let go, and then having to let go of them all over again. Love looks like rescuing my brother from a drug induced coma and driving him passed out in my car to the vet with his cats. Love is really loud chewing (I thought it was just me!) and spilled soup and milk. I looks like demands for this toy or that game; though I’m offering them my time and attention, but these aren’t as exciting as a screen.

This all sounds so down, but the point is that love is the binder behind all of it. It is that thing that makes me wake up and start all over again. It is the gratitude that my journey, my mistakes, my experiences and sorrow and pain and confusion are the very foundations of my wisdom. They are the thing that makes me, me.

Yes love holds me while I rail – and I hold it while it rails. We just hold each other in a bear hug that is sometimes more of a wrestling match then tender.

Love throws me continuously back into the raging frothy stream – and when I come to the surface sputtering and angry, it dunks me under again and again and again until I surface with more grace, more wisdom, and more determination to do the inner work that I’ve needed to do all along.

Love is honesty and patience, but it is also the glue that binds this wandering life from one point to the next. Love is knowing that I am still standing and walking and breathing. Love is finding the quiet moment in the morning when I can recognize myself under the rubble.

And love will indeed be the thing that is left when I am gone. It is what was here before this form was here. It is the thing that winds its way through my DNA like a railroad track with a slow chugging locomotive moving from one generation of women to the next. It is the thing that connects me across time and space – which allows me to trust again and again, and after 20 years still know without a doubt that the decision I made to marry my best friend was the right one. It is the thing that I hope my children will remember one day, after the dust has settled on my failings – I hope they will see that beyond all the impatience and instruction, there was always love…deep, thick, unending love.