Writing Prompt #475. You’re asked by the love of your life to define what love means to you.

What is love? Baby don’t hurt me…don’t hurt me…no more…

Love is time. Love is effort. Love is listening.

Love is saving the cabbage stem in a little bowl of water all day for the one who enjoys it most.

Love is sacrificing something you enjoy doing to do something the person you love enjoys doing. Like sitting on the beach under an umbrella all day when you burn like a lobster and you’d much rather be touring old houses and being gently buffeted by porch ceiling fans, hung from haint blue ceilings. Or not going fishing, but instead taking your wife to the beauty parlor because she’s nervous about driving on the highway.

Love is a dog who meets you at the door even though you’re an hour late.

Love is bringing you a Sprite with the good ice when you’re sick.

Love is starting your car for you on frosty mornings.

Love is telling your children no, even though it hurts your heart, because you know it will benefit them more than giving in.

Love is tulips on a Tuesday in April.

Love is coconut cream pie like your granny made.

Love is picking them up from the airport at one in the morning, even when you have to be at work at eight.

Love is simply good morning texts with a blowing kiss emoji, but also making sure you’re ok when you had to cry a little bit when you learn your friend had to put their dog down.

Love is carrying in firewood and making sure the generator has gas before a winter storm.

Love is not posting unflattering videos when they have their wisdom teeth out.

Love is a koozie from the beach, just because.

Love is loving you, warts and all, as my friend Rhonda says.

Love is, “I don’t know why I called you, I just wanted to hear your voice.”

Love is lighting up when you see them, and craving their touch.

Love is rubbing aloe on their sunburned back, or rubbing your legs even though you haven’t shaved in a few days.

Love is help doing whatever needs doing, without being asked, like carrying in groceries or picking up sticks in the yard.

Love is feeling safe in expressing true feelings or thoughts and knowing the other person won’t judge you. It’s not holding back truths, because true love won’t desert you, just like Journey tells us. Love is also safety in knowing they fully support you, that they have your back against the rest of the world, that they will back you up, no matter what. Love is a partner.

Love is a best friend, a dog, God, a horse, a river, parents, your children. Love is passion and comfort.

There is probably no one less qualified to write about love than me. I don’t have a marriage of fifty years to smile smugly about…even though those who make it to fifty are rarely smug. It’s the twenty-five year veterans who think their world can’t be flipped upside down. I didn’t even get ten before I learned otherwise. I didn’t have a Cleaver family upbringing. I didn’t have hordes of cousins or a neighborhood gang of friends. I didn’t have unconditional love from any traditional source until I realized I had it in Lisa. No matter how bad I screw up, no matter how hateful and cross I can be, no matter how much I get onto her about certain lifestyle choices she makes, Lisa loves me. I know this. She’s the truest friend I’ll ever hope to have because she knows it all and still loves me. And if I said, “come”, she’d come. I’d have to do all the diggin’ on account of she knows I would, (and she wouldn’t want to wreck her manicure), but she’d help me drag.

I was talking to a good friend of many years tonight, telling him bits and pieces about how this blog was coming along. You ask people what their version or definition of love is and you’re very likely to get some of the best stories ever. His parents were much older when he came along, and they were of the generation who didn’t show much, if any, outward affection. His mother stayed home and kept house and his father farmed. It was an existence without flowery declarations on social media, no flowers on the table for an anniversary because it was more important to stay current on the Co-op bill. There was a diamond on her hand and a new washing machine if the other one started making a racket. There was a new Oldsmobile under the carport every few years, something safe and reliable. For him, there was biscuits and sausage gravy and pot roast and mashed potatoes and cornbread and clean, white, pressed shirts. As it goes, his dad became ill in his later years. When they’d brought him home from the hospital and installed him in the hospital bed in the bedroom, his dad said to him, “What do we need to do to the living room so when I roll over I can see your mother?” Later that same day, his mother said to him, “We need to move that chair in case John needs me so I can get to him.” She hadn’t heard heard her husband’s comment earlier, and the chair had set in that same exact spot for thirty years. They moved it that day.

We need six friends to carry us when we’re gone. Most of the time we’re lucky if we’ve got one to hold our hand while we’re here. I know love. It’s all around me. Love can be one of the scariest things to admit to, putting your heart on display like that. Offering it up for all the world to see. But you better tell people. They need to know.

And this, my friends, is why Valentines Day is hogwash. True love is in the every day, to the last day.

LOVE from Appalachia,

~Amy