Smiling

It took me a long time to really understand love.

I love my children. I don't think I ever realized how much I could love someone until I had a child. I honestly would do anything that I thought was important for my children, but that is a selfish sort of love, in a way, because whatever I give my children I am really giving myself.

Then there is romantic love, but I think the idea of romantic love mixes everything up, especially when we are young. We are so inculcated by tales of romantic love that we forget that there are other kinds. But romantic love began in order to propagate families, to make little copies of ourselves and that is wonderful, but it is selfish too.

I am trying to describe those indiscernible feelings that are stronger than the strongest super hero, gentler than the mildest spring breeze, infinitely warm and sweet . . .  All encompassing. Incomprehensible. Better than food, or drink, or even maybe life itself. Something that must be experienced, because there are no real words for it,

Perhaps it happens all the time and we just don't recognize it, but I don't know how that could be because I know it and not recognizing it would be like not seeing the sun blinding me in the east as it rises, or not noticing it filling me with an indescribable warmth right out of the blue, or hearing it whisper to me and discovering that the merest thought of it makes me smile like I have been told the greatest secret there is.

Because.

I have.