Isn’t love a funny thing? Like, really. Think about it. It’s kind of an odd thing. Sometimes we immediately fall head over heels for a person, and other times we end up with the last person we thought we’d ever be with romantically. Sometimes it’s not always love between two people, but being in love with life. Sometimes years pass, life happens, you have kids, your kids grow up, you grow older, and then BAM! Love.
As I write this, it is my parents’ wedding anniversary. It would have been 30 years today. They got married when my mom was newly pregnant with me (“when you were a seahorse”, she says). It would have been 30 years strong, a weathered relationship that absolutely proved the vow of “for better or for worse”. My parents had their ups and downs, but they loved each other. But here we are, and on this day that was always so special for them, my mom is currently back in the town she grew up in, in the midst of a serious relationship with her high school sweetheart, and battling life’s ups and downs as a parental figure to his autistic adult son. My dad 7 years passed this July. Love.
My beautiful sister in-law is always marching to the beat of her own drum, which is what I love about her. Because of this amazing quality she possesses, she’s so very far away from me, working for free on a cattle farm in Colorado. She’s jumping around from temporary home to temporary home, living an absolutely breathtaking life in a setting that looks like a painting every single day. Not one picture she posts isn’t stunning. She’s getting her hands dirty, doing work some would say women can’t do, but she does and she does it to perfection (even if she doesn’t always think so). She and her boyfriend are living this crazy, wild, free life together out there with so much potential and so much selflessness. She’s in love with life and I can see it in the constant smile on her face and beautiful, healthy glow on her face. Love.
My husband started out normal enough. He had a first love, which ended. His heart was broken. He fell deep into the world of literature somewhere along the way. (Sometimes I think if the house were on fire he’d choose his books over me.) He met a girl at a bar and only months in, moved to Maine and found out they were having a child. He became a dad, struggled not only financially but emotionally, and tried to make a relationship work that just wasn’t meant to be. He moved back home, broke up, and tried to start fresh.
When our paths crossed he was a single dad, beginning again. I had always loved him, even though the feelings were not always out in the open or even fully acknowledged, I knew when we finally chose each other, that they had been there all along. Now here we are, a family of 5. A blended family of 5. 4 girls and my husband. Love.
Love comes in so many forms and it truly is such a funny, funny thing. What does love look like for you? I’m a hopeless romantic, so please share your love and your passion.
