My Love Story (Day 45, Year 3)

In my 45 years, I think I've learned a lot about love. Like, I think we live in a world where love is encouraged to be temporary or disposable--like, "oh I loved that," or "I used to love them." 

I don't think love is ever that way. I know I've been lucky to love one man and marry that one man, so my perspective is different. But, I have loved many things and many people and honestly I haven't stopped loving anyone who I ever loved once or anything I ever loved once. It is just that maybe that love isn't floating to the top right now; but it's always there. It hasn't been driven away by trend or betrayal; it's maybe just put away on a shelf somewhere.

I like this idea that love is stored up, even when it isn't current. I once loved my brother and now I love the memory of him. Loving that memory is a sort of love story, I think. It is like if ever anyone opened me up, they'd see a map of people and things I loved--it would be a love story--my love story. 

I think my love story would start with the love I had for my parents--maybe even before that with the love I had for whomever was with me before I was born here. I always wonder if we meet those who came before us in Heaven. I think we do, so yes, my love story starts with my grandfather and my great grandparents and some aunts and an uncle and a cousin. Then my parents and everyone I met here. Even the love I had for my first toddler playmates and later for my preschool friends (who I still know and actively love). Then all the years loving My Little Ponies and Garbage Pail Kids and later New Kids on the Block and Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Architecture. I stored away my love of drawing and buildings for words, of course, but I in many ways, maybe that part of my love story is less about the mechanisms (the words, the buildings) and more about the love of creation. 

After all, I am so in love with creating things--gardens and outfits and experiences and meals and parties and stories. 

My most important creations are my children, of course.  I think my love story's longest chapters are those with my husband and three children. That love story is not one that is ever shelved and in fact, it was always foreshadowed, perhaps from the very beginning. 

And the amazing thing about love stories is that they are always growing--I think my love story grew volumes when we moved to Eldridge and found all these people who were family. I know my love story will keep growing as my kids grow up and keep writing love stories of their own. I look forward to reading their love stories, too. 

Thank you, friends and readers, for being part of my love story. I love all of you, always, for reading my words and simply just being here.