Recently, I was in St. Louis seeing a doctor about my neck. After spending the whole day getting there and waiting three hours for him to materialize, my return flight was canceled, so I got a hotel room, went downstairs to Applebee's (the first one that I ever set foot in) and ordered a martini. A few seats away, sitting by herself, I overheard a woman talking to a friend on her cell phone, and telling her to "make him think it was his idea.” It was quite obvious that she was giving her friend advice about her love relationship. She ended the conversation by saying, "I love you."
The night before I had watched a movie on On Demand, The Last Station. It was a remarkable film about Tolstoy and his conflict about love. I was moved to tears at the end, as it touched on something that had happened to me that morning. My niece, whom I love dearly, had written me off with a hurtful, sarcastic remark.
I was driving south from San Francisco to Carmel Valley with my nephew, Paul, in his Mini a few weeks ago. We started to talk about his recent breakup with his partner, Brian, and how painful but necessary it was. Then the conversation turned to his relationship with his parents. I mentioned that I had never seen his father display any signs of love, and his mom was not very affectionate either. Both of them would shut you out without warning from time to time for years. They used love as a bargaining tool. You either did what they expected of you, or they shut down.
Neither of them had been talking to Paul and his sister Alyssa for about two years, until Alyssa decided to bite the bullet and placate my sister-in-law in an effort to get her mom to talk to her. She wrote her an email telling her she had been the worst daughter ever, and she was now willing to change and be the best daughter ever, and she would only talk to or have relationships with people that my sister-in-law approved of (me not being one of them). I thought that Alyssa was joking and that she had no intention of sending it, but I was wrong. Her mother responded with a phone call a few days later accepting her apology. Paul and I were discussing what a desperate act this was, and how my niece was willing to end everything that she had previously professed to care about to win back her mother’s love. I suppose that some people love in desperation and others use it to get what they want.
Every once in while my own parents would come into the conversation. My mother couldn’t love. She never even hugged, and my father, although loving, was emotionally absent. I remember one time when I accidentally spilled a cup of hot tea on my father's bald head. Later I wondered if I was trying to get him to react. I'm sure it was an accident!? Of my four siblings, only two of us are affectionate--my sister Evelyn and myself. The others have a hard time displaying love, especially my brother.
Some people seem to be "All Love," like Sylvia, the dear friend I lost last May whom I wrote about in a previous blog. Sylvia loved everyone. I don't think I ever heard her say a bad word to or about anyone, ever! She was truly all love and showed it proudly. Yet there are those who have a hard time showing love or loving.
That got me wondering: What if we are all born with our own capacity to love? Some more, some less, like being gay, or being a happy person or a sad one. Maybe it’s part of our personalities, or our DNA. Perhaps we can't help ourselves. Alyssa's parents weren’t very demonstrative, yet she loved deeply although her brother Paul isn't very affectionate. Yes, my father was loving, so you can say that perhaps I got the capacity to love from him, but what about Evelyn, my sister? She was raised by my mother, who was a single parent from the time Evelyn was two until she was nine. Didn't see a lot of love there. Yet I know no one more loving then she, although it didn't rub off on my brother Nate.
So "What Is This Thing Called Love?" I think that we all love differently, for different reasons and to different degrees. Sometimes conditionally, sometimes not. Sometimes according to whom we are loving and for some, as best we can. We love friends one way, our children another, and our lovers yet another. We all want it, can't live without it. Some of us can't get enough of it. It hurts, feels good, confuses us. We even feel guilty about it! Some use it and some abuse it. Artists paint it; writers write about it, musicians make songs about it. It's in religion, science, psychology and philosophy.
If we think about all this and look at the people that we do love, it might answer a few questions about our own relationships. It might make us more accepting of the people that we do love, realizing that their capacity to love might be just different then our own, but that they love to the best of their ability, as do we. Not less than we need, not more, not too much, just what they/we can!
One thing for sure, love will never go way. It's here to stay. Like breathing. It’s essential!
This is the fourth time I rewrote this blog!
