"I've looked at love from both sides now"

1969, I am shiny and new. A sophomore in college. Out and about sort of on my own a little and listening to all the music of my generation. One line stands out. I remember it as I really don't know love (at all.)

Of course we always thought we did know love. It was the age of love. Make Love Not War. But society made war and we made love and we made marriages and then we tried to make babies. It took a long time to get those babies, but when we did!?

Oh my, I knew. The first time I held my baby in my arms I knew! I knew that I knew love in that moment and it was like nothing I had ever felt before. I told myself that loving babies and loving grown ups was different. That was all.

And I believed that until we were divorced. And I believed it for ten years after that. The absolute unconditional need to love my children filled me to an overflowing I never really felt for any grown up. It was just different. The give and take was different. The trust was different. The sharing was different.

The fact that I continued to love them in that way long after they grew up didn't change my feelings. I assumed that it was just because they would always be my babies.

But I just hadn't met the right people, because now I do know love. I've known for seven years and it is just like it was when I first held those babies. I am not anyone's first love, or really even their second, but that doesn't matter. Love is love when it is real and not just infatuation, or attraction, or lust, or need.

It gives and takes with almost total abandonment. It wants only the best for the beloved. It finds a way to surmount all obstacles. It is a closeness that is in no danger of being breached by another, because it is not related to quantity.

Love is a beautiful mystery, a quality that can survive anything, because the connection is so complete, so ethereal and discerning it is a part of you -- like the beating of your heart, or breathing.