I’ve talked a lot about love on this blog. And my daughter. And what love is while I’m trying to love my daughter. I’ve said before that I didn’t think that I loved my daughter. I still cringe every time I say that. If that’s a feeling that you have I recommend being careful where you say it. For instance, most women in your “Mommy, Mozart & Me” class are not going to want to sit by you if you tell them. Clearly a semi-anonymous blog is the much better choice. Here’s the thing. I was wrong. Being wrong happens to the best of us…and to me.
I’ve even said that I was wrong before. In one of my more cleverly titled blog posts, “Caw caw squawk silence” I ate my crow (seriously, I still that is funny two years later) and admitted that I loved her,
“more of a "bite the bullet" love than any kind of love that is likely to be mass produced and stamped onto wrapping paper. It's nitty-gritty love, survival love, drag you to therapy love, stage an intervention love, tough love, make a fool out of myself love, do it anyway love, hold you while you cry love, cry myself to sleep for you love love, look past your crap love, bang my head into a wall love, not bang your head into a wall love, refuse to quit love, refuse to let you quit love, force the truth love, reject the lies love, hold your pain love, change myself for you love.”And honestly, today has been a day that I’m counting it as love that I haven’t banged any heads into a wall. Naptime may never be over today. But I said something wrong in that post,
“yes, I love her and yes, I love my boys, and no, it's not the same, and yes, that's okay.”That’s the wrong part, where I say it’s not the same as I love my boys. The way I feel for my boys is nice and easy and satisfying. I’d venture that maybe there’s a little bit of too much pride in there for something that’s more luck than anything else like buying Park Place and then Boardwalk both on your first trip around the Monopoly board. But the way that I feel is not a measure of love, just of how much fluff we have on top of the love.
In typical spoiled American-privileged way I identified that easiness and happiness as love. It’s nothing but the surface of love. It’s like looking at gold-filigreed wallpaper and thinking that’s what holding up your house.
Loving Boohoo is work, the hardest work I’ve ever done. We are not ready to put up wallpaper. Frankly, three years in and I think we’re barely starting to hang drywall. We are still framing this (what I’m hoping will be the most awesome ever) house of love. And I’ve never had to build love quite like this so sometimes I put the wall up in the wrong place and then we’re all running into and finding out that if I leave that wall there that later on we’re never going to be able to add plumbing (I have never actually built a house, don’t look too closely at this metaphor) and I so I stomp around and she has a tantrum and we snipe at each other and then take that wall down and fix the problem. It’s not easy. It’s not pretty. It is love. And it’s not some second-rate love that I have for “someone else’s child who is so lucky” adoption jargon boys.
The only difference between my love for Boohoo and my love for my sons is that the love I have for them has had the blessing of being largely untested. It’s been years of happy fluffy blubbery easy love. But if something happened and that decorative easy to feel fluffy love was gone *I* wouldn’t be gone and my actual love wouldn’t be gone. The love I have for them has the same steely-fierce-never-quit strength behind it. I just don’t have to think about it very often/ever (knock on wood). We have years of Fluffy Love and the accompanying Fluffy Feelings to protect me from the terror, pain, tears, and God-given stubbornness that come with the hard work of building love from the ground up.
Quick Recap:
Real Love: Never Quits, Super Painful, Totally Underrated, Indispensible to Healthy Relationships, Produces convoluted feelings of terror and hope
Fluffy Love: Only Culturally Acknowledged Form of Love, Promoted by Unicorns, Hallmark, and Made for TV movies, Sneaky because it tries to convince you it is Real, Easy, Likes to Frolic, Produces Fluffy Feelings,Truly Nice to Have Around but Not Actually Vital
Quicker Recap:
Wall::Wallpaper
Real Love::Fluffy Love
The Point:
Boohoo and I continue to build/have the good stuff we just don’t have the fluffy stuff.
Yet.
Great post, Jamey. I'm glad you are back blogging! I'm sorry things are still hard, but it sounds like every day, you guys are making progress :)
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteI think this might be my favorite post!
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Thanks. I think the same analogy can be used for marriage too....(except the fluffy stuff starts out the relationship most times).
DeleteThanks. I agree that there are a lot of marriage similarities. I think that most of the time Fluffy Love DOES start relationships because frankly, if it didn't feel good there wouldn't be a lot sense in continuing to be around that person. We build the Real Love through Fluffy Love most of the time and that's a fairly painfree way to do it. Even parenting a biological-to-you newborn starts with (usually more or less) nine months of Fluffy Feelings and newborns were designed to elicit Fluffy Feelings from adults. Of course, especially with parenting, there is usually that Real Love built at the same. But this building it backwards stuff is an entirely different beast.
DeleteYes, I agree. For me, I think when the stress ramped up in our lives, I found it much much harder to have any kind of fluffy love at all for anyone. I found my own "attachment" to my kids was very stressed and then it was even hard to hold on to the easy stuff. Then, if there is chronic stress, the fluffy kind just has a much harder time raising it's head. Yet, because my marriage and bio kids had such a long start with the easy kind of love, it was more ingrained or something, or more real love is being built. Not sure that all makes sense, but I really think external stress can impact the kind of love you can show your kids or husband.
DeleteI'm a fairly new reader. We are on a similar page today as I just posted a few thoughts about the love b/t my daughter and I. I keep thinking of this over and over in my head, but wasn't brave enough to put it on my blog. ;) "Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams. -The Brothers Karamazov Not that our love is dreadful, but I think you'll know what I mean.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading, Sharon. That quote is PERFECT in many ways. I'm going to share that on my FB page!
DeleteThanks for your honesty. Love is tough. Even after 3 years.
ReplyDeleteLOVE this!!! I actually just posted about love myself. Your post has be reflecting on it. I think Pricess and I have both the fluffy love and the real love. She's like two different kids - fluffy most of the time and HARD the rest! She gives me practice at both. Sounds like you've been having some fluffy moments with BooHoo lately! May your love keep getting fluffier!
ReplyDelete"In typical spoiled American-privileged way I identified that easiness and happiness as love. It’s nothing but the surface of love. It’s like looking at gold-filigreed wallpaper and thinking that’s what holding up your house. " GENIUS. I'm going to have to quote you, frequently.
ReplyDeleteLove this analogy. Love you.
ReplyDeletePraying 2013 is a year of walls, plumbing and some FLUFF for you and boohoo!!!!
Wow....the "Real Love Recap" is how I feel about marriage.........I love the words you used. "Produces convoluted feelings of terror and hope". YES!!!!!!!! Oh my....thank you for nailing it for me. I have to copy that and put it somewhere.
ReplyDeleteI'm so thankful you have come to this new realization for you guys! That must feel like a huge step. Congrats, or something! :)
Love is quite a beast!!
Wow. I haven't kept up on blog reading for a long time. This made me cry. It's beautiful! And, so true. "The only difference between my love for Boohoo and my love for my sons is that the love I have for them has had the blessing of being largely untested." If only I could've seen that in the beginning, instead of doubting my whole universe because something feels different! This is one of the best analogies involving attachment, struggles, and the *length of time* this stuff can take--that I've ever read. Great post!! (And, yes! Like Captain Murdock said, here's to some "fluff" in 2013!)
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your struggles. I recently came across a saying that seems trite on the surface, but proves pretty deep if you think about it: "Love isn't how you feel, it's what you do."
ReplyDeleteI read this when you posted it, but today I needed it. We've been foster parents of a newborn for a little over a week now, and the newness has worn off, the tiredness has kicked in, and she's been sick all night. In a moment of desperation last night we were ready to give up. This morning I kept thinking over and over, how to people do it? Why doesn't anyone talk about how HARD it can be to have to fight for love? I remembered this post and I just wanted to thank you, from two sleep-deprived people who are in the banging-our-heads-against-the-wall stage of love.
ReplyDelete"When I expect it to be easy, to come naturally, I've bought into the lie of this world that love costs pennies and not a life"