Love is Not a Peanut Butter Heart

Image by ♥ Melly Kay ♥ via Flickr

A card and a Reese’s peanut butter heart await my four-year-old son today. After school, I hope he and I will collaborate on a hand-made card for Papa. Yesterday, while Jonah was most enthusiastically expecting a visit from his NYC cousins, I encouraged him to make them a valentine. I cut out from felt, at his direction, a black heart and a very small green heart, both of which he glued to a piece of paper. He surrounded the hearts with an attack of crayon marks, then ripped up the edge of the paper I’d trimmed from the spiral sketch pad and glued the pieces down, making an array of tentacles. He glued the edges of the paper together to make an ‘envelope’ and signed his name on the outside. Despite my having to work pretty hard at peeling the halves of the paper apart, his cousins seemed to like it. And it really was lovely: a duo of unconventionally-colored hearts, tiny paper fingers reaching out, a smattering of crayon kisses.

That’s about the extent of Valentine’s Day around here.

Fortunately for my husband, who would freely admit to not being terribly romantic, I do not heart Valentine’s Day. To make sense of this, I recall my pathetic little adolescent desire for a boyfriend, for ‘love.’ As though finding this thing we call romantic love were a shield and the antidote to disappointment, tragedy, injustice, poverty, and every other ill the world has to offer. Okay, okay – I know what (some of you) are thinking: But if people loved each other more, the world would be a better place! It’s hard to argue with that, and I’m not. Not really. What I dispute is the portrayal of romantic love as some kind of fortress, a refuge from all the world’s ills, a fairytale reversal of Rapunzel. That happily-ever-after ending: Once the star-crossed lovers were united, they lived a life of bliss. It’s not necessary to know anything after that, because there’s no more story to be told.

These notions are perfectly suited for the heart of an adolescent, fueled on TV movies and eager to escape her suffocating parents. Love—real love, adult love—is being able to disagree, even argue, and know your relationship can withstand it, that somehow you’ll arrive at consensus or learn to live with your differences. Or both. Love is going through periods of discord, realizing you’ll meet again a little bit farther up the road. It’s facing life as members of a team, understanding that each of you has individual needs and aims and dreams as well as mutual ones.

But I don’t pretend to know anything about romantic love. Because I don’t.

When it comes to being a mom, I don’t pretend to know anything about that, either. I know I love, but there are moments when I don’t want to break away from the crossword puzzle. Or I just want to finish this one newspaper article, or eat my dinner—would you stop asking me to play with you? Or I haven’t had a chance to catch up with so-and-so for ages—can your needs wait ten minutes while I talk on the phone? Or you’re so damn cute when you pout I forget to take your feelings seriously.

Love is not giving up every bit of my being. It’s not ceasing to exist. It’s not relinquishing desire or pleasure or even phone conversations. But I’m not sure where to draw the line because I have no prior experience and have misplaced my child’s owner’s manual.

I do know that love does entail giving something up. It does occasion putting someone else’s needs first. It is getting up at 2 a.m. to comfort your child after a nightmare. It is worrying a bit less about the stupid shit you used to worry about before you became a parent: your appearance, your clothes, the plastic surgery you dreamed of. Or it should. Love is rising to the occasion. It’s growing up a little.

Love is not a Reese’s peanut butter heart. But sometimes, to a four-year-old, it’s pretty damn close.