The Way Love Looks

I believe in real-life fairytales. Not the kind Disney is known for, where something tragic happens to a beautiful girl and a strange man goes on a quest through the dark woods with no map and no verification that the lifeless body he found is "the one". Then on the opposite end of the "love" spectrum are versions like The Notebook that portrays true love is the ultimate test of life. In these tales true love is the aftermath of a lifetime of tests, betrayal, long-suffering, and the prayer that maybe the abundance that you love someone will eventually be enough for them too. Then you have mixes of these in series like Sex in the City where you are forced to journey through life attempting to draw love out of overwhelming infatuations that you develop for a particular person, for a specific moment in time, and are almost always fleeting. Are any of these really love?

I think that every love story is just a relationship comprised of individuals with different abilities to love, understand the complexities of love, and contain the capacity for love. Some, like myself, are capable of loving a multitude of people and growing so much into the other person that when they leave (never if they leave, because they always leave) you continue to watch them fall in love with someone else, create a family you dreamed of, reach potential they didn't know was possible in themselves until you pushed them to try, all from a distance because the season they were committed to loving you ended. That's hard. That makes total trust and security in a single individual nearly impossible - but if you have seen it, real love like I have, you would agree that it would be worth it just to be loved for a little while.

I believe there is a reason why they don't show you any of the "happily ever after" part, and it's not because it takes a lifetime to truly give someone a lifetime of love - that I can say I have finally felt for myself. No, it's because the most meaningful way someone can show love is understand exactly what the person needs to feel loved - at the moment they need it the most - at a personal sacrifice to the giver for no other reason, but the desire for them to feel cared for is deeper than any other factor at the time. Perhaps even more powerful is the ability to truly care for someone unconditionally. To give with the understanding that all strings are attached and somehow each sacrifice you make is not a limitation to yourself, but an investment in the relationship. An investment of the foundation you want to build on, the reflections you want to have one day, and a test of your limits - despite the outcome, you chose them daily.

I grew up in a household that sometimes as a preteen made me sick. My mom and dad were high school sweethearts, who met in the band - mom played the clarinet and dad the saxophone. Every evening like clockwork Dad would come through the garage door into the kitchen to find my mom fixing dinner, something that she knew would fill him after a long day of high intensity physical labor. It didn't matter if us kids met him at the door first - our mom always received the first hug (even if it was from behind hunched over the stove so the potatoes didn't burn) and a kiss. It came a running joke even outside of the kitchen anytime my parents displayed any kind of PDA that I would gag - very dramatically, with tongue reflexes, an eye roll, and a dramatic exit, but I secretly loved it. I've heard that true love can be seen best through the eyes. The eyes work as a means to sort out the real emotions of the person even in moments when they can't outwardly express anything else like shock, fear, sadness, indescribable joy, and love. One of the proudest moments I recall seeing my mom have was when my dad stood before the church with her to his right side and became ordained as a deacon. The sureness of her commitment to him and the steadfastness that she vowed to have with him along the journey was something I have wanted from that day.

Perhaps the most powerful testimony to their love to witness was the hard parts. The heated arguments that happened late at night when us kids were supposed to be sleeping, unsuspecting that anything was wrong. The years my dad followed work across the state, living out of a cheap hotel room, in order to provide for his family, always counting down the days to be back home in the arms of the woman he loved. The layoffs and unemployment that followed those extensive trips and the empowerment and uplifting my mom dedicated that season of her life with so my father could still stand on the foundation of leadership in our household. It was sacrificial love in the most beautiful form, It was submission and faith not just in each other but that your future together was bound by a vow stronger than just the two humans that made it. It is a fight against the enemy as cancer eats away at your body, but can't touch your soul because the forces of love are too strong to be reckoned with. Happily ever after isn't built on romance, it is simply the choice you make to invest and be invested in by the one person that accepts you as the whole person you are and chooses to love you anyway.

My mom grew up in a split home. She was raised by my Nan alone after my grandfather, Billy-Doug "ran off with a floosy after the war". Although she didn't have it in her home, she talks about the real love she dreamed of having in my great aunt Geneva and her husband Oliver. My Nan was one of 11 children that Hermon and Callie had. Hermon, like most men in Appalachia was a miner. The mountainsides that used to belong to the Mullins clan are now part of Karr Creek Lake in Knott County, KY. My Nan was the first girl to graduate high school in the family, and the only one to have any post secondary schooling. If you were in the market for a suiter, you either prayed to find him at the church house on Sunday, met in school before the 8th grade, or you waited in the holler for him to come and find the daughter of the man his uncle recommended may be a good match. That is exactly what happened to Geneva. A smooth talking young gentleman, fully devout in his faith, drove into the holler in his convertible a month before he deployed and swept her away.

I remember the first time I saw the image of the two of them sitting side by side in that car. He was beaming with pride, while she was trying to hide her pure excitement, fearful it might make her vain. Each year at our family reunions the house would wake up first thing on Saturday & Sunday mornings to the two of them, singing out of an old brown pocket hymnal - call and response style. He would lead like they do in the old southern Baptist church and she would follow along behind in the sweetest soprano just as they had done each morning together for the last 50 years. No one ever joined them in song, but I remember sitting at the top of the balcony peering down at them holding hands, eyes shut in humility, worshiping together. That love is powerful. About a month before Geneva died we took a trip to Hazard to see them and an aunt of mine made a comment about how blessed Geneva had been to have Oliver to always love and care for her, how lucky she had been. Oliver, who was a man of not so many words (let's face it, by now you know that the women in my family are always the ones with things to say) told this story.

"It had been a hard day in the mine. We had tracked about 8 miles when the explosives went off. Pieces of the mountain flew for miles, some as big as dogs, others the size of an oak stump that had reached the end of it's life. Our house was directly at the base of the mountain. My Geneva was at the base of that mountain. (What I didn't know at that time was the pervious drilling that had been done on the mine site had blown a boulder 6 miles onto the roof of a miners house that lived on the other side of the creek, the only thing that saved his family was the fact she taught at the local school and was teaching that day.) It wasn't like we could leave to go check on our families. Our gaffer said that the overman would notify him if there was anything the came up we may need to know from the explosions, but we didn't believe them. I will never forget seeing my Geneva run down all those stairs from our porch to meet me in the drive, but something happened to me when I hugged her. The best I know to say is all the fear I had finally took over my body, and I couldn't move. That woman carried me up the stairs into the house and helped me undress on the couch to put me in the wash tub she had filled for me in the kitchen before I even got home. She helped me in the wash bin and gave me a bath then put me to bed because I still couldn't. I don't remember saying anything to her that day, and she didn't say anything to me either - we didn't have to. We just love each other."

What absolutely kills me about his story is Geneva knew. She knew! She anticipated his return to her and the realistic state he would be in to have already prepared his bath and to meet him outside as reassurance. Words between them would have added nothing in that moment -presence was enough. Her hug, her touch was enough to paralyze him in that moment and she quite literally carried them on their hardest day. What love is that. That is the way love looks.