Looks of joy rivaling Christmas morning
When I looked over the island counter in the kitchen and saw two young beaming faces my heart melted and I was charged to sustain the joy they were feeling. They weren’t opening a Christmas gift or watching Dora walk through our house, they were watching my husband and I kiss.
As he was leaving for work I gave Chuck a ritual kiss goodbye, but with a little bit of early winter warming flare. He responded playfully and pretended to be surprised by the affection and the kids laughed down to their toes. So I did it again, and he played it up and the kids became positively giddy. I told them with the passion I feel, I love this man! And Michael jumped down from his chair and ran to his Dad, hugging his leg exclaiming, I love this man too! And then Kate jumped down and hugged me chiming, I love this girl! Endorphins filled the kitchen. It was an amazing way to start Wednesday.
By last night, it had grown to epic proportions for us as parents - one of those gold standard moments you want to freeze-frame forever. We both reveled in the look of pure, unadulterated joy those kids experienced seeing LOVE between their parents. For different reasons we were both powerfully moved by how profound that simple experience must have felt to our kids.
My parents divorced before I can remember, so I didn’t see romantic adult love as part of my immediate family experience. I accepted that married people loved one another, but I would have been hard pressed to describe that that looked or felt like. Because I hadn’t felt it in my home, it was as foreign to me as another language. Most adults in my life were not affectionately demonstrative so I didn’t learn much about love vicariously either.
I did have neighbours who were the parents of a best friend of mine who could be frisky, affectionate and playful with one another. I remember feeling vaguely embarrassed by them; but I also remember the expression on my friend’s face when she would share the endorphin rich space - it was peace. And I have an Aunt and Uncle who provided me my most visceral and audible experience of love whenever I stayed at their house. I remember lying awake shocked, perplexed and finally slightly voyeuristic listening to their happy coupling. What amazed me was that I was the only kid listening - this was normal for my cousins! What an experience in contrasts for me.
Naturally, I took my circumstances for granted and didn’t understand that I grew up with a deficit of experience in this department. Sadly, I learned that lesson like the impact of driving full force into a brick wall. I was married when I met Chuck and fell head over heels in love with him. I was shocked, embarrassed, humbled and grief stricken when I realized that I had married the first time not for love, but because that man fit my list of qualities “most likely to succeed” in a game with no better than 50-50 odds. I simply didn’t have the experience of the kind of love that gets you through the darkest times to know I didn’t have it. Romantic love was creative writing I would have thought. Learning I was wrong was a hard lesson and a blessing for my future children.
We celebrated last night our faith we have that our children will continue to grow up in a home filled with love - the truest and purest kind - and the peace which comes with it. We want them to know that love is an entitlement more than anything else in a healthy relationship. Modeling healthy relationships is a powerful gift we can give to our children, especially when it heals something in us too.