It's one of those words that has a million connotations, yet it's almost ineffable in its quality.
We think of love as romance, sex, affection, companionship, loyalty, trust, vulnerability ..... the list is pretty endless. Yet it's none of these things on their own, and more than the sum of them.
It's hard to define exactly what it is, yet we know we need it, and we definitely know when we lose it.
To be an unromantic biologist about it, love is necessary for survival to form attachments with our parents as newborns. If our parents didn't fall in love with us, they'd soon get fed up of the screaming, defecating ball of fury they gave birth to, and we'd die. Our very survival depends on being lovable.
But love usually has a transactional element to it. We love someone because they love us back, or because they care for us, or because we admire their achievements. It's generally conditional. If someone is aggressive, or disruptive or makes our live difficult, they don't usually make it onto our Valentine's card list.
So it's a bit confusing when we have kids, who basically eviscerate us and stomp all over our innards while we smile benignly at them.
It's even more confusing when we have autistic kids. They ratchet the innard-stomping all the way up to max, combust our innards in a high-speed blender and then pour the contents all over our favourite laptop. And we fucking adore them.
Love doesn't make sense.
From a biological point of view, we would be wise to reject our autistic kids. They're very unlikely going to pass our genes on, and they are ingenious at making our lives difficult (I'm thinking about Finian's infamous smashing-eggs-down-the-back-of-radiator phase). Logic says it should be easier to love our neurotypical 'kids' (is there a better word for our adult 'kids'??? Someone please tell me), but it doesn't seem to work like that.
Not many of us are fortunate enough to have experienced unconditional love. But we can turn that on it's head and experience it by giving it.
I love my kids just because they exist.
And, flying in the face of logic, I love my egg-smashing, hell-raising autistic son just because he exists.
Even though he ate my favourite crochet hook earlier today.
Go figure.
Try fitting that on a Hallmark card.
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| June 2004 |
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