Love.
Love.
This week I was thinking about love. That in the great steaming heap of things we are supposed to worry about, make time for, put effort into, photograph, post, comment on, pack, unpack, wash, tidy, check, pass on, sign, remember… I find the marketing of things like love… odd…and a little uncomfortable. When showing our dear ones how they are loved becomes yet another task to arrange, thing to buy, gesture to contrive it feels a lot more like work to me.
These days I show love overtly as the yin to the yang of toddler-insanity-induced rage or kisses hello and goodbye, good morning and good night. I soothe the hurt and sick, we snuggle in quiet moments and, sure, we tell each other “I love you” but all these (while nice) happen in prescribed ways that end up feeling automatic. Yes, you snuggle the mortally wounded (and yet miraculously not bleeding) child and the arms and chest are there but somewhere you are wondering if you remembered to turn the tap off in the kitchen before you came down here and are maybe a little annoyed at having been interrupted.
Between the mundane love, the auto-pilot love, the obligatory love and the commercially scheduled love you have to wonder where you fit in the real stuff. Not the stuff of high passion, but the foundation -- that bedrock of love in your bones that requires no effort. Like water flowing downhill, natural and as refreshing as the rain.
I worry sometimes since we are not the most vocal people about our emotions in our house. I mean, don’t get me wrong- we talk about our feelings- but I suppose like most of us with most things we end up worrying if we are getting it quite right... or worse, getting it really wrong.
Then we have a moment like today in the course of a day that was just like any other day, when nothing in particular was happening out of the ordinary. I was buckling the kids into the car and saw that one was shrinking away from the sun in his face. Without thought, as easy as breathing and so automatically I surprised even myself, I shifted my weight so that my head shaded his face while I finished putting on his straps.
That was it.
He was uncomfortable. I helped. And as my shadow cooled his face and protected his eyes he took a breath, and relaxed. I saw him feel loved, cared for, protected.
All I did was shift my weight.
All the pressure we feel coming from all quarters around us, and we easily add to that burden by putting more pressure on ourselves at every turn.
All I did was shift my weight and he felt loved. It was as easy as water rolling downhill. I may not notice it every time, but somewhere I have to think that if I did it once, I must do it often. That means he feels loved often.
So I can let myself off the hook a little. Even if I may not have achieved my own expectations of showing love (and let’s not touch how those standards get set) I can rest a little easier feeling a bit more confident that even if I don’t make the effort, it happens. It is there.
And if I add to that the times when I do manage to be present, sink into the snuggles, kiss the tears and say the words then we really are doing just fine.
And that is something.