What Is Love?

I have to admit I've been partaking of trash television. I've been watching The Bachelor. And then listening to Christine and Molly on Broadminded (Sirius/XM) trash the women the next day.

These are all women—well, really, they're just girls, many of them in their early twenties—whom you love to hate. Or at least dislike intensely. They all whine and catfight like little girls. Jake must be thinking with his Johnson if he's drawn to any of these women. (Actually, Ali was my favorite. Until she started the sobbing and whining about having to leave to go back to her job. And Michelle was my most behated. I'm hoping the outcome next week is that he chooses none of them. Especially not spoiled brat, fake boobs Vienna! But I digress. (Shades eyes with hand in embarrassment over her trash TV revelation.))

Here I am, pushing 60, having professed love to at least five men in my life. I listen to these girls, and to Jake. "I'm falling in love," each of the women proclaims. And Jake states he's in love with three women. I listen to them and think they don't have a clue about love. (And why does it always have to be "falling"? Can't it just be, without having to lose its balance and fall?)

But do I have any greater clue?

What tells you you're in love? What white light inside your eyelids makes you unable to hold those three syllables inside any longer? Is a 25-year-old's declaration any more or less believable than a 60-year-old's? Is each love the same? Different? Is it made real by your belief in your own declaration? Is it more believable three months into the relationship? A year? Is it made more believable by your partner's desire to hear it?

I remember saying it to husband number one and then, ten years later, telling him "I don't think I ever meant it." Was I simply trying to hurt him for all the pain I perceived through the years?

Does just verbalizing "I love you" make it real? Irrevocable?

I offer a snippet of Wordsworth from "{Risking Everything}: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation", edited by Roger Housden. This is from Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of settings suns
…

Is love simply that which impels us? And the desire to verbalize that love simply as natural as the act of breathing? And as necessary?

I've been ignoring, for sixty years, the fact that my birthmother laid in the hospital for six days and held me and [probably] cooed to me and [probably] stroked my hair and marveled at my long fingers. And gave me my bottles. Her breasts were swollen and aching. Her bottom was sore. She knew she would walk out of that hospital with empty arms. And yet she laid there and held me, saying a long goodbye, saying a long "I love you."

I've lived my life paralyzed by the threat of rejection, when maybe all along I misinterpreted the unspoken statement.

Is love, at its most basic, just staying. Staying and holding and supporting and caring. Walking with one to life, as my birthmother did with me, or to death, as I did with John. Or through life, as so many long-married couples do, day in and day out. Or away from fear and angst and into peace, as the Jazzman frequently does with and for me.

Is that love, by implicit definition?

I am disturbed by the joy, and long to remain in this state of being disturbed. Disturb me some more, dear man, dear friend.