In Love with Another Man

There is no coming back from this.
I held his hand. I kissed him.
My heart is his.

Lolly

Yes, of course, the title is total click-bait and I am having some fun.

The thing is: I am in love.

I knew before Benjamin was born that I would be pleased. A grandchild is going to do that. I had no idea, however, that I would find myself flooded with love.

Love.

We, as a world, seem to have reduced love to some sexualised attraction full of stolen kisses and other such taboo moments. If I don’t have butterflies in my stomach, I must not love you and must move on to the next person. For me, this is the stuff of television and not real, not one bit.

This is what is real.

I like Hubby. Yes, I love him, too, but I also really like him. He’s funny and kind and a sweetheart. He hugs me, makes dinner, and is my number one bestie. This is deep, abiding love that comes from journeying together, helped along by the choice both of us make to keep loving. It probably looks a little different for you but the essence of it rings true: for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health…

As I drove home from work the day after Benjamin was born, the sky was big. I will not live to see Benjamin grow old and, yet, what Hubby and I started, will live on. Ben will have his children and they theirs, and on and on it will go.

The sky doesn’t end. It continues beyond what we can see, beyond who we are. We look up at the same sky as those before us have. The same and yet different. They looked with their eyes, their lives, their thoughts, and I look with mine. And after I have drifted out of living memory, the sky will continue to be looked at. The weather will be as the day brings it but the sky goes on.

Love is like this.

We each carry an expression of love, feel it, long for its warmth, for its comfort. It is both here and now, and beyond us. And sometimes it overwhelms us with all of its possibilities.

I remember feeling like this when my own children were born. This inexplicable overwhelm.

…I keep using the word ‘overwhelm’. I wonder if it is a result of not knowing consistent love as a child, of not living in the space love creates, or if, just sometimes, love is simply overwhelming.

I want to improve the world and make things as good as I can for the next generation. Not just for Ben but for all those being born. Ben is the catalyst. He has opened my heart to the future, to leave things better, to make sure that those who are coming are equipped for the weather they will face.

It isn’t a matter of spoiling Ben—although I may indulge him a little—it’s about understanding that the way to make this world better is to keep healthy and contribute all that I have to contribute. It is to stand firm for the greater good, to show grace in the face of suffering, and to leave things better.

I am going to ride this wave of love for as long as it lasts. No doubt it will settle into calm waters and become the ongoing consistent love that keeps us all alive. But, for now, I am going to harness love’s energy and put my hand to the plow.

No. I don’t intend to breathe Ben’s oxygen. His mum and dad are wonderful people who are doing a terrific job of parenting.

Yes, I do intend on getting to know him, on being there for him. I have already decided on the first book I will read to him—Hairy McLary—and am intending on purchasing a book bag to fill with other children’s books so that we may read as much and as often as he chooses. And I do imagine him being big enough to help me in the hot house, planting seedlings and noticing slugs and snails and puppy dog tails.

At the same time, I am not wishing away now. He is small and has tiny wrinkled hands with fully formed fingernails. The smallness of him brings me to the bigness of life. One of my favourite lines of poetry comes to mind:

I lift my eye to the hills…

The now and the not yet are wrapped in the gift of this baby. Ben is both this wee little man right now and a grown man in the future. I see it when he is in the arms of his father, once a small baby in my arms, now a grown man.