Big Love

My own heffalump has been love, big love. I'm not sure what it looks like or sounds like; I'm sure it's a bit scary and I'm hoping I'll see it before it sees me.

I have loved and I have been loved. But of Big Love, I have been afraid. I have been so afraid, that I have left some loves because I was not ready. My parents, they had a Big Love. It began as an old-fashioned love affair. They met in Stockholm in the 1960s. He was a handsome, American diplomat, thirteen years her senior with three small children. She was a young, Swedish, green-eyed, fiery secretary working at the American Embassy. He was the son of a Southern belle and a Major General. She was the daughter of a prominent businessman and blonde beauty. It was a time of men in suits and hats, of cocktail parties, of elegance, of manners. They married in the city's cathedral, the surrounding grounds covered in February’s snow. To me, it always seemed a magical love.

When I was fifteen, I woke up late one night to the sound of crying. Crouching at the top of the steps, I peered down into the lit kitchen where my parents sat, dinner plates pushed back on the table, glasses of wine half full, my mother smoking, talking, crying. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but their voices were gentle. It was my first memory of what real love looks like.

Back then, I wasn’t afraid of love. I wasn’t afraid of love until my early twenties when my father died. My mother did not want to be without him; it took ten years, but at age 58, she literally gave up living. I have been afraid. I have been afraid to love so much that I will want to give up living if, when, I lose my big love.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. I am not a mother, nor do I have a mother anymore. But over the years, I have been mothered. I was read to, sung to, nursed back to health when my face swelled with mumps and when my body scabbed and itched with pox. I sat at the kitchen table after my first heart-break, comforted with tea poured from an earthen pot and words of empathy. When I wore the very wrong outfit, an - ugh!- dress, to a school dance, my mother – though quite annoyed – showed up in the rainy, dark evening with jeans, a blouse and sneakers, so that I could change. For many years after she died, I had a clear image of my mother flying below my plane, her red hair frizzy in the wind, her pointer finger gently holding my plane safely in the air. From my mother, I learned love.

The other day, I talked to my mother in the car. I explained that I wanted her beside me, but I needed to figure this love thing out on my own. I imagined she was sitting in the passenger seat, listening while gazing out at the passing sugar cane fields. I'm pretty sure the corners of her lips were turned up in a small, satisfied smile.