Love is...
inspired by Stella Parker Martin Cary
Love is the way he, a hyperactive six years old, let me hold on to his earlobe for a whole day at the new church school.
Love is her handwritten notes snuck into strange places my whole life, always relating some version of you are sensitive, but you are strong, go, go, go.
Love is catching her puke in my cupped hands, singing her inappropriately sad Tracy Chapman songs in the middle of the night, being an ever present witness for the freckle inside of her belly button for ten years running.
Love is the hot cup of coffee he brings me in the morning and the way he tries, hard, so hard, not to interrupt my reading, but has to do a silly dance anyway.
Love is a slow burn—the way I knew we would one day play some significant role in one another’s lives—the purple cupcake, the uncomplicated duh when I ask her a favor, the baby she made that is home in my arms.
Love is the way he lay on the bathroom floor with me while I have a panic attack the night before our wedding, his Tabs and afghans, his hyperbole.
Love is diner eggs, art monsters, and the way she makes me feel brilliant and alive.
Love is the way she sees me—as bewildered as the 10-year-old I was, freaking out in the bathroom of Michelle’s Ice Cream Parlor because I was afraid they might kiss us and as fearless as the 44-year-old I’ve become, who says the hard thing, does the hard thing, is the soft thing.
Love is her ham salad sandwiches, Sweet Adeline jewelry in the big blue box, her mastectomy scar.
Love is her nightly text—Small triumph?—and the way she calls me honey when I’m low.
Love is never showing up without way more food than I expect, the grape leaves, the voice texts, the perfect playlists, the unconditional love for this precrastinating 22-year-old who is suddenly twice as old and on the opposite coast.
Love is when he threw me his rain boots as he was getting into the cab in DUMBO, his dating life unspooling over beer milkshakes and white parties, my ride-or-die.
Love is her giant moon face on my pillow, her first questions in the morning, the way she always befriends the underdog.
Love is the old man in the raspberry beret.
Love is sister cousin.
Love is the teacher who sees the question underneath the question.
Love is the nurse that knows.
Love is Peter Gabriel, Keith Sweat, Fiona Apple, all the soundtracks to loves lost.
Love is a 40 and McDonald’s on Valentine’s Day, a first kiss that landed him in the hospital, and kind of blue.
Love is his 2 am testimony that my heart is as big as this car.
Love is a melting ice cream sandwich in my face in the middle of Prospect Park.
Love is running a marathon straight to the Amtrak train in Washington DC and surprising me in Brooklyn, a cancelled flight, a future he predicted with reckless surety.
Love is grief—sometimes sharp and acute, sometimes as long as life is and beyond.
Love is renewal—remaking and re-meeting and forgetting and remembering.
Love is care—the covid tests strewn on the counter and the humidifier blowing steam into the air and the anxious listening in the dark.
Love is surprise—still not knowing the baby you gave birth to, the body you came from, the one you’ve slept intertwined with for nearly 5000 nights.
Love is grace—forgiving, being forgiven, giving up control.
Love is time, never enough.
Love is enough, always time.
Set a timer for 5 mins and share your Love is… in the comments! It could be a river of multi-dimensional love.
Love is lying next to you on the hardwood floor all night, knowing it will be your last, trying to protect you against another seizure as the bamboo woodchime goes crazy in the wind.
Love is you climbing into your brother’s crib as he cries after I put him there in order to have a phone meeting.
Love is sitting on your sofa watching the crows, waiting for the groundhog you’re feeding in your shed, rubbing your hand, and wondering aloud what animal you’ll be after you die.
Love is crossing the Columbia River, you driving across country with me and knowing this expanse is what you need to cross to let me go.
Love is listening to Johnny Cash again and answering your questions about the date and the time – again.
Love is waking for 6 am practice and driving to pick up my best friends, then decades later waiting outside a freezing pool at 9 pm on a weeknight, knowing we need to come home and get your homework done as you dissolve into tears.
Love is you running at me full force at the backyard gate before I can even put my suitcase down, melding your body to mine with all your force.
Love is you showing up at my door, climbing into my bed, and crying out the loss of first love, letting me rub your back like you did when you were little.
Love is pushing you in your wheelchair in the Florida sunshine, holding up clothes – so many tan turtlenecks – and making you a blanket.
Love is you meeting me in Chicago while I fall apart, my heart yanked out and you there, patient and present, willing to travel miles.
Love is “I hurt” and “I’m there.”
Love is your soft fur pressed against me and your legs lifting in the morning light as you roll over for a belly rub.
Love is the way you brushed and braided my hair.
Love is walking load after load of your stuff up to your fourth-floor room, rearranging the furniture, and watching you delight in hanging posters full of anticipation.
Love is hurrying ahead on the church in Paris so that I could turn and watch your face take in the room.
Love is walking out of the hospital to see you experiencing the profundity of the moment, well beyond your 4 years.
Love is feeling frustrated by the same behaviors I admire in you, all the time, all at once.
Love is those desperate eyes coming at me at the end of the day, arms out stretched, for a run and hug.
Love is the way your eyes tear up when you see me reliving old pain.
Love is overhearing you tell our daughter, "I think I'm in love with you"...all the time.
Love is staying at the airport drinking wine with me during my layover, at your home airport, even though we've both just been on a too-long transcontinental flight.
Love is granting me that solo trip knowing how hard it would be on you.