Defiance of Common Sense

So, someone asked me what love is. How I define it, how can I prove that it exists in enough of a form that it's worth the struggle we put into it and, sometimes, the pain and heartbreak that we get out of it.

I responded first with, "That's a hell of a question." And then settled down to actually thinking about what they said, and what it meant to me.

Love is when my father takes ten minutes to walk my mother down the stairs, holding her up, because she's in so much pain that she's crying. It's when he gets her downstairs and helps lower her into a chair, and then tells her that he'll take my younger brother to school, then come back and stay home from work today (missing a couple meetings) because she hurts. And it's when my mother tells him to go to work anyways, and he goes, because he knows that she'll call him the moment she wants him, and she knows that he'll come home.

Love is when my brother fell in November, splitting his chin open to the bone because his heart stuttered, and he let me hold his hand tight and sit with him for hours in the hospital while Dad and the relatives rushed around, gathering up food and other items to make him comfortable. And it's when I wish I could take a time machine and go back just an hour earlier so that I could catch him before he falls.

Love is when I ended up in the hospital in 2004, and I was crying and terrified as they put in a bed in the ER and my father told me he would stay the entire time and crawled into the bed with me and let me pretty much strangle him as I held onto him. Love is when he stayed the whole night, until I was transported in an ambulance to another facility, and then he followed the ambulance the whole way, following me into the new hospital and up the stairs to the new ward where he was finally turned away because it was two in the morning and visiting hours weren't for another six or seven hours. And love is when, eight hours later, Daddy walks into the ward with my mother to sit with me, and bring my siblings and real food the next day again.

Love is my brother picking up and saving a nearly perfect sand dollar from a beach excursion for me while I was in the hospital.

Love is my sister going to the Scottish Games one year and racking off Marine-perfect push-ups to get me a shirt from the Marines booth because she knew that I was thinking about joining them, but I was sick that day and couldn't come with them and she knew it would make me feel better.

Love is when I'm sick and feverish and miserable and haven't said anything, but my mother shows up by my bed anyways with a cup of tea and a cool hand, murmuring soft things to me until I sleep. And it's her bossing me around after that, telling me to stay in bed!

Love is my brother, after a long day and a kind of nasty fight, suddenly looking into my face and going, "Hey, you okay? You look kind of sick." And it's when we tease each other without speaking, trying to stifle giggles during church while Mama gives us the Evil Eye from down the pew.

Love is when my mother makes me a shawl, her very first knitting project, and takes three months on it because she wants it to be perfect. And it's when she makes it out of alpaca wool (which is sinfully soft and warm and pretty expensive, I think) in my favorite color.

Love is when my younger brother surprises me at Christmas with the newest book by my favorite romance novelist, and it's still in hardback.

Love is when my father walks up to my mother on the beach one cold, foggy day in San Francisco, and plants a kiss on her cheek for the hell of it. (And we got a picture of it.)

Love is when my younger siblings get pissed off at a couple of their friends for making fun of me because of the school I was going to at the time.

Love is a lot of things. A kiss on the cheek, your hand being held, that warm, fluttery feeling in your chest when that special someone is nearby. It's passion and desire and peace and warmth and comfort, the madness of lightning storms and the calm of a sleepy spring day all at once. Little things, big things; things that change the world and things that nobody ever notices. Love is letting something go - and holding on so it never fades away.

Love is so much more than just a word, but that's the only way we know how to say it.