“I love you” is abstract. “I remember the way you held my hand during the thunderstorm in 1994” is a time machine. Specificity is the language of the soul.
But weakness, as it turns out, is just love that hasn’t been admitted yet. Let me be honest: my mother is still stubborn. She still interrupts me. She still watches the news too loudly. I still get impatient. The structural problems of our personalities didn’t disappear in thirty days. After a month of showering my mother with love ...
We spend our entire lives believing that love is a finite resource. We hoard it, protect it, and often, unintentionally, ration it out sparingly to those we assume will always be there. We tell ourselves, “I’ll call her tomorrow,” or “I’ll be more patient next time.” But tomorrow has a cruel habit of turning into a decade. “I love you” is abstract
I stopped trying to shower her with love and simply started living in it. We fell into a new rhythm. I came over to cook dinner without asking. She started leaving voicemails just to tell me a bird was on her feeder. We watched a terrible movie and didn’t look at our phones. When I left, she walked me to the car and didn’t say “Drive safe.” She said, “I had fun.” But weakness, as it turns out, is just