A poem by a friend

If I ever have a child,

or if a child were ever to ask me

What is life?

I will say,

It is about learning love

loving others, loving the new and different and foreign

It is about other loves, recognition is one kind, forgiveness another, and faithfulness and honesty and patience and generosity

It is about being amounts love, savoring it and accepting its impermanence, knowing its limitations, learning to go without and learning to remember and expecting

It is about being loved, being given to, needing, wanting and receiving. This love is a gift, a beautiful debt to which the one right response is tears and a tender heart

It is giving love, speaking promises and affirmations followed by quiet but steadfast deeds, offering comfort and joy and pleasure

All this in the determined hope of becoming love itself

and then I would kneel down and whisper in a serious tone so the child understood

Everyone’s love is different

and not everyone you meet wants the same thing