When your children are born all you care about is that they are healthy. Everything from their Apgar score to the day they walk it’s about their physical health. Are they breathing, are they crawling, are they walking. And OMG are they doing it on schedule?
Once you pass that hurdle it becomes more complex tasks, are they holding a fork, a pencil, are they throwing, kicking, speaking?
And at some point it morphs into concern about their emotional health. Are they happy? Can they make friends, share, converse, love?
Crossing this last hurdle is different. When they walk, talk, use the potty there is relief, and some satisfaction about the way it changes your life. But when they love, the platonic love of friendship, someone outside your family for the first time you are proud and leery. Because you know just as love gives, it takes.
So when the best friend gets off that international flight and the girls hug and hold hands and smile, smile, smile, you know in your mind that there is also going to be a day like this morning. The day the best friend goes back home and your child goes back to school and there is the drama of the complete collapse.
And so today she didn’t learn how to love, but we now know she understands the two sides of love. And her heart breaks, and so does ours.
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