I’ve seen and felt love many times. Love is an easy thing to recognize, but it is much harder to understand. Growing up with cerebral palsy I have experienced many kinds of love from my parents, be it the love that compels a parent to care for a child long into adulthood, or the love that manifests itself as righteous anger at a bureaucrat who will not do the right thing for a child with special needs. Luckily, I was shielded from most of the latter, and didn’t know about it until I was older and better equipped to handle it, and that’s love too, taking the blows and bruises behind the scenes, so that your loved one can ride blissfully along the path you’ve just cleared.
But, if you want to understand love-really examine the nature of it-you must step back and watch it in the lives of someone else. The first time I was able to understand love was when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. When my mother started chemo-therapy, my father would always make sure to take her to breakfast before her first treatment of the week, because soon the nausea would become so severe that this meal would be her last for days.
Like many women with breast cancer my mother lost her hair. It began to come back, and it starts as downy fuzz. I remember my father taking my mother’s head in his hands and inhaling deeply,
“Mmmmmmm, baby-head.”
My father accompanied my mother to all of her appointments, except one, when she persuaded him to take care of something vital to the family business. The chemo-nurse immediately assumed that his absence was permanent, because in her experience that was usually how things went, some men just can’t handle it. This story makes me wonder what sets my Dad apart? Why did he succeed where so many others have failed? The simple answer is that he is exceptional, but that only explains why, not how. I think I can make an educated guess, and I think it’s a matter of perception. Both of my parents can see things others would miss. Throughout my life they saw me first and my disability second. They were not blinded by the giant shadow cast by my diagnosis. That’s love. The scent of hair re-growth reminding my father of new-birth, that’s love. Love can blot-out the sheer horror of things, burn so brightly that tragedy can be obscured. Then, with time, even our worst memories fade just a little, I discovered this for myself after several major surgeries. When our mind searches back for these moments, the most horrific parts are mercifully sketchy, what we perceive most clearly is the beauty amid the ugliness, our memories are tinted with the color of love.
