What Is Love?

Paul McCartney famously asked what’s wrong with silly love songs. The question is the answer. Love is the deepest form of necessary silliness in the human soul. Some of us have spent decades wool-gathering, trying to define it and its importance.

I wish I could impart to my children the absolute volcano of emotion a specific song can cause to erupt. But then, there are so many specific songs and specific artists’ voices, and specific symphonic compositions that can hit that spot or one equally dynamic. I fear my children’s generation lacked the soulful music of my own. My parents probably thought the same of their generation vs mine. After all, much of their music was born of the heartache of World War II: love and turmoil, excitement, danger, and safety.

My mind readily mixes music with emotion, but even in relative silence love breaths.

For me, it is the memory of waking up to the smell of coffee. I descend the staircase in my ragged nightgown and see the man below in his leather chair, book in hand, dog at his feet. He smiles up at me and tells me how beautiful I am when I know I have pillow-face and hair bent in every direction. It is finding the freshly picked rose secured by the wiper on my car windshield as I leave for work. It is the subtly sweet smell of skin with the perfect tactile feel, not too dry, not sticky, warmly yielding to my hand or cheek, my ear against an expansive chest pulsing from the heartbeat within. It is the large, strong, yet sensitive hands of an artist touching mine, and the deep soothing voice of a man who yells so rarely that you know only pain could bring out that sound. It is the man who turns to me for solutions when he cannot find them, who praises me for my intellect, vision, and discernment, and yet teases me with humor for my flaws. It is a man who caresses his cat and his dog with such tenderness that they crawl over each other to win a spot on his lap. It is the man who puts food before me so that I will not starve when I am too upset to salivate. That is how it feels to receive love.

How do I return love? How do I show love to a man who gives like that? How do I show love to my children and grandchildren? I try to offer what I have, knowledge and perspective gained, even if it doesn’t seem to be desired at the moment. Perhaps at the right time, it will be remembered and found helpful. I tell them how amazing and beautiful they are. I try to teach by example, even knowing that my examples are likely marred by my own imperfections. I hug them and kiss them, when they allow it, because I cannot recall ever getting enough of that from my initial family. I encourage them to be active in school music, not only for the music’s sake, but for the sense of belonging, of created family it gave me in my youth. I want them to have that kind of embracing direction and that positive blanket of friendship that insulates them from the back-stabbing and divisive outside world.

Then, perhaps foremost, is the expansive love of life, the waking up to a cerulean sky, or a morning’s golden rays still beneath the clouds making the trees across the creek glow against a looming gray sky. It’s the brilliance of a cardinal on a green or snow-covered branch, the acrobatic performance of squirrels flying from rooftop to overhanging tree limbs, the cooing of doves on the power lines, the sound of waves crashing on a rocky shore. It’s the pawing of a gentle dog begging for attention. It’s the phone call between friends, just checking in to make sure the world is alright. And at day’s end, it’s standing on the balcony to find the Big Dipper or Orion’s belt marching across the dark sky, the immense vastness of God’s creation. How much more love do we need?