What Is LOve?

“Don’t! I don’t want you! I don’t like you!” scolded my 3-year-old daughter as I kissed her chubby cheeks. She put her hand on my chest and pushed me away.

“That’s not nice!” I said, as though a hot knife had pierced my heart.

I thought back to the time when I first knew that I was pregnant. Now, I said to myself as I put my hand on my belly, I’ll have someone who will love me forever. The sting of my alcoholic father’s abuse and my mom leaving us to preserve her sanity would finally be over. I would truly be able to live happily ever after.

***

BAM! Dad slammed his fist down on the kitchen table, shattering the sugar bowl. His bloody hand dripped on the table and I ran for cover in my bedroom. My stomach wrenched in knots. I was only six, but I knew what love wasn’t.

***

BAM! Dad put his fist through the wall and smashed the glass milk bottle on the kitchen floor. My brother and I ran to our bunk beds and covered our heads. I was only ten, but again, I knew what love wasn’t.

***

Dad grabbed my mom by the collar of her shirt and raised his voice in anger. I got out of bed and stood between them. “Don’t touch my mother!” I taunted. Ashamed, Dad let go and went to the bedroom to cry. Mom sat in the kitchen with a cup of tea and lit a cigarette. I was twelve. I went to my bedroom and stayed awake until I knew my mom was safe. I knew what love wasn’t.

***

What was love? I longed for it. I yearned for it, but it eluded me… until one day when I was fifteen. I met a boy in the park. I was babysitting. It was “love at first sight” as they say. He swept me off my feet and pressured me for sex even though I told him that I wasn’t that kind of girl and that I wanted to wait until I was married. Over the next few months my “No’s” were met with stronger urgings, until the final ultimatum: If I didn’t give in, he was going to leave me for my girlfriend, who, he said, told him that she would have sex with him. My gut told me no, but I couldn’t face losing someone else whom I loved. I knew what love wasn’t, but I didn’t know what love was. I got pregnant three weeks before I turned sixteen.

***

We got married. He continued to drink and smoke up, and I had this beautiful baby girl, but felt so alone. He told me to go and visit my mom up north, and that if I wanted to have sex with other guys while I was gone, that would be okay, because he was going to have sex with other girls while I was away. When I got back home from my visit I left him. We divorced. I knew what love wasn’t.

***

I lived with another friend. He was stoned every day for three years and then we married. He told me that he chose me because I was beautiful. I chose him because I wanted security. We stayed mismatched but married for 34 years. He told me that he didn’t feel close to me anymore. He was emotionally cold and distant. I began losing weight. I felt starved for love, and empty in my soul. He was sick but we didn’t know how much. He died from leukemia a year later. I knew what love wasn’t.

***

Seven years after my husband, my Dad, and my stepdad passed, Mom seemed like a shell of her former self. She sat in her glider watching game shows much of the day, and only went out when I would take her. I decided to move us both back to our old hometown, where her sister and her old friends lived. I didn’t know where we would live, but I sold my house and searched for another one. I wanted to rescue my mom. I knew what love was.

***

I met up with old friends at coffee shops after our Sunday meetings. A kindly man, who we knew for forty years, became good friends with us after his wife died. “I would never marry him!” I said to another friend. “He jokes around too much!” I still didn’t know what love was.

***

On our wedding night, we stood in the hotel room, he sixty-nine, and me sixty-two years old. He held me in his arms, and said, “I’m so happy I could cry. I think this is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”

***

I know what love isn’t. But now I know what love is.

It’s when he tells me, “You are my most favorite human on earth”, even after four years of marriage, through the isolation of Covid, and the stresses of looking after my mom when she got sick and was hospitalized and then moved to a retirement home.

It’s when he woke up one morning, looked at me, and said, “Oh, it’s not just a dream. You really are here,” and he put his arms around me and told me how wonderful I am.

It’s when I go into mom’s room and she’s crying and frightened because she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be doing, and can’t remember how to use the TV remote, and I put my arms around her and tell her that she’s going to be alright, and that I’ll always be there for her.

It’s when I adopted two little puppy mill rescue dogs a year after my second husband died. It took lots of work every day to win their trust. But when I scratched them on their necks, and they kissed my arm, I knew, and they knew what love was.

It’s when I volunteered to teach a friend’s autistic daughter how to do jewelry-making, and she texted me back, “You don’t know how much this means to me. Like, I’m squeezing you right now.”

It’s when I stand outside by the river before sunrise, and raise my eyes up to the glorious heavens, utter a word of gratitude for my life, and soak in the living painting that is spreading out before me.

It’s when I tell myself, so what if not everyone loves me? I AM loveable, I AM worthy of love.

And finally, I believe it. Now, I know what love is.