Just Another Day

Around our house, you can hear some version of this conversation about fifty-bajillion times a day:

“Hey, I have to tell you something.”
“What?”
“… I love you.”
“I love you, too.”

We say it as a matter of course, and in part because my nephews are young and sweet and when you spend time around them, you just can’t help telling them how much you love them. (They’re freakin’ adorable, dudes.)

Today, for Valentine’s Day, I made little cards for my family with handsful of silly glittery stickers and so many hearts. I laid them out on the kitchen table, surrounded by chocolates in Valentine’s Day wrappers – tiny tokens to represent an ocean of love that I wonder sometimes how it all fits inside me.

I re-read one of my old Valentine’s Day blogs, and was reminded that I really do have a lot of love in my life. People who love me even though I am complicated and stubborn and weird and not very good at loving them back, sometimes.

I’m not very good at loving myself, either, but I’m working on that. Today, my gift to myself was to finish reading the latest book from my favorite author, repeated listenings to Shane Koyczan’s latest album, once more rejoining the ranks of grown women with hair that is a very silly color, and – maybe most importantly – a few small, quiet tears of complicated, melancholy joy. I may not have that monogamous partnership that our culture has taught me defines “love,” but I am fucking drowning in beauty and wonder and love.

My nephews love light-sabre fights and tickle wars and making silly jokes and playing with my musical instruments. And me. Good fucking enough.