The following entry was written by Elaine of Wannabe Hippie. Elaine is also a contributor at Mama Says Om.

We kiss kiss kiss
in this family
holding each others hearts
and hands
and wetly
loudly
passionately
showing our love for each
and every one of the people
that form our happy mess

We kiss at transitions
We kiss as a welcome
We kiss as we play
We kiss to heal
a tiny owie
We kiss kiss kiss
because we can't help but love
these crazy people we call
family

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The following entry was written by Captain Mom of Captain Me Planet.

Love is...love is. Love is...What is love? It is not moonlit nights, or Godiva truffles. Or the first kiss, and mad making out. Love is not presents, sharing fine champagne and gazing into each other's eyes. Love usually isn't pretty and wrapped with a bow at all. Love is an action. A making a choice to follow through even when, and especially if, you. don't. feel. like. it. At all. It's leaving everything you've ever known, to be with the one you chose. The one to whom you committed. Love is giving up pieces of yourself, if they are harmful to the oneness being created from you, and your other. It is accepting the icky pieces of your other, until he can give them up, too. It is understanding that there is no happily ever after, the way they describe it in Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. The happily ever after looks a whole lot more like high fiving each other on your tenth anniversary because dammit, you made it! And want to keep going.

Love is accepting and trudging through the times that really stink. And not saying I told you so, but instead, just holding and murmuring little lovies when the crap hits the fan, after you've warned it will. Love is sharing the only bathroom in the house when your both spewing from each end, and not complaining about the smell. Love is cleaning up the little chunks, when your husband chooses the wicker trash can in which to yarf. Loving is eating Italian over and over when your favorite ever food is Mexican. Love is knowing your husband saw you poo when you tried with all your might to push that baby out, and his not telling you he saw, because he knows that even in that moment, you'd be mortified. And 8 years later, neither of you have spoken of it. And love is holding my hand, when you want to pass out, as the doctors lift the organs out of my uterus to make room to get to the baby. And love is most definitely not just walking out on one of those endless, forever and ever nights we didn't sleep, and thought we never would again, because that big-headed baby would not stop crying. And love is not taking that screaming baby to the edge of the neighborhood, and slinking away, just hoping, please God, now let us sleep. When some nights, we wanted to. Love is telling me my hoo-hoo doesn't look so much like a cabbage anymore, 2 weeks after trying to push fat baby out, even though I knew, it did. And in these revelations of what love really is, our hearts exponentially increased in capacity, to points past bursting, as we discovered depths of love we couldn't know existed. Until the children.

It is the agonizing over every tiny detail. Is he still breathing? Is he getting enough milk? Is his little brain being stimulated properly? It is crying over him during the first throw up bug he ever got, aching for his discomfort. Love turned out not to be the moment I finally got baby and me in our matching overalls, like I had dreamed I would, and out to Home Depot for spring annuals. Rather it was in many, many moments of surviving day after day after day, during which the baby had to be worn to sleep. And was worn while I went to pee, or vacuum, or slept sitting up, as not to disturb him. Love was when we realized we had the capacity to do it again, and again, and eventually
become a family of 5, even though we had begun to get an inkling of the sacrifices involved, not the least of which, was my breasts. The breasts that bared the nipples that became shredded, oozing and scabbed, while I did what I thought was best for the babies I loved. Love is driving a really old mini-van. And buying the better clothes for the children. And wearing the stuff I've had for a decade. And really not caring. It is the endless cycles of laundry, and forever sentence in the kitchen. And wiping the bum of your 5 year old, because he just doesn't get it yet. Love is my husband driving the old truck without air conditioning, in southern Georgia, in the summer, so I can have the comfortable car. And taking jobs he may not like, because he wants us to be safe, secure. Love is sometimes giving a little nookie when you're not really in the mood, because he is. And love is not pursuing a little nookie when you really want to, because she really doesn't feel like it. And love is shutting it all down, when you both want a little nookie, because a child has a bad dream, and needs to crawl in bed and snuggle down between the two of you. And somehow, you both still feel satisfied.

Love is the every day, in and out, ordinary and sometimes really sh*tty parts of life, but doing it together. And being glad to do it together. Even if you don't feel so glad in some moments. It's deciding to stay in on your 13th anniversary because you've both committed to keep to your budget, and retire the debt you racked up in the earlier, less informed, years. And making a celebration of out some cheap wine, and a couple of inexpensive steaks. And each other. It is committing to look outward together, and share a vision. And ignoring the graying hair, sagging stretch marks, tired nipples, and even thinking you are each more beautiful today than the first day you met. Not just thinking it, but really feeling it. It is knowing you won't give up on each other. Love is really not about anything society sells as love, but everything other worldly, unable to be bought or bartered. It is thinking of someone else before your self. Love is not quitting, but instead, arising each day, with the hope of what's ahead. Love is working toward the finish line, together.

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The following entry was written by Melissa of Space and Time

It is always this time of year that I reflect and write to you, and this year should be no different. I still think about you, although not as much as in the beginning. Or ending. I’m never sure how to phrase that. But in my heart there was a beginning and no ending, just a separation that will have an end.

When I think about you, I think about what you would enjoy doing, what games you would like to play. I bought you your own Monopoly game just in case you would enjoy that with me. I also bought Trivial Pursuit, knowing full well that would be a game we would enjoy when you were grown and out of the house, because one needs to experience massive amounts of TV to play Trivial Pursuit.

I only got to know you for a short period of time. Too short. In my heart, your personality is comic, a drop of sunshine in a puddle. I smile when I remember the day I found out about you. Two lines will never look so bright or so promising. Two lives, now going toward the same goal.

Now your are being taken care of in a place I can only imagine. I know you have a full staff of angels ready at your beck and call to answer any noise you might make. I know when you fall down, you fall on a cloud, with your own name on it, so that you don’t bruise your knee. For there are no bruises in Heaven. There are no tears in Heaven. You are being brought up by the Heavenly Father and I for now only have my imagination to see you. There will come a day that I will get introduced to you. And you will know that I loved you, but God loved you first. And then we will play Monopoly and you will tell me what you’ve done with yourself. Until then, I will write you letters and think fondly of you.

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The following entry was written by Amy Anderson of Mamazine

The amazing Mommybloggers asked me for thoughts about love, and I ended up giving them my thoughts about estranged fathers. What can I say, except, well, blame it on Brokeback?

Thanks to some neighborhood friends we swap babysitting with, my husband and I went to see Brokeback Mountain last night. I was blown away by the sheer visual beauty of the movie (this California girl has seen too little of the middle parts of our country, something I’ve got to remedy soon), and I sure didn’t mind getting to stare at Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal for a few hours. Mostly, though, I came home stunned by what a sadly accurate portrait it was of the ways men are encouraged to stifle their feelings, whether they’re gay cowboys in the 1960s or suburban dads in 2006.

In Brokeback, both men are loving fathers. It’s the contrast between Ennis (Heath Ledger) as a young man kissing and nurturing his (always crying) baby daughters and Ennis twenty years later, trapped in his own prison of emotional distance and unable to have real relationships with anyone, including those same daughters, that breaks my heart every time I think about it. Both men in Brokeback are captives in a male role they couldn’t step outside of without lethal consequences, namely the ideal of the strong and emotionally reticent good provider.

I think of my own dad, a loving, hands-on father when I was younger, now someone several of his ten kids have little contact with. Someone, in fact, whom my mother has a restraining order against. My grandmother, his mom, tells stories about my dad as a shy child with his nose in a book all the time. He was the first in his family to go to college—the only one of his five siblings to do so. “He always did love babies and kids,� she noted as my parents adopted one child after another. I try to reconcile this image with that of the man who leaves my stepfather threatening letters. I can’t.

I stare at pictures of his 22-year-old self, back from Vietnam for a week to see me, his six-week-old firstborn, for the first time and then fly back to continue fighting in a war he didn’t believe in. I think of him returning home months later to his little daughter and a wife who had been waiting for years by then to make a picture-perfect home of her own with her husband and daughter.

The gap between the man the military expected him to be and the man my mother expected him to be was beyond vast. I’d call it schizophrenic. For years, he told us he never saw any action in Vietnam. In reality, he was trying to erase the memories of everything he’d seen in the war. He was trying to be the opposite of the kind of man that war had required him to be. His year spent at war must have contrasted in strange ways to the life he returned to, the one filled with babies and college classes and jobs and the purchase of a first house.

I think those conflicting expectations of men were hard on my dad. On one hand, he was supposed to be tough, constantly on guard for danger, and sometimes brutal. Yet as a father in the 1970s, he was also supposed to be nurturing and loving. Just as Ennis’ abiding love for his daughters stays bottled up inside of him, so too does my dad’s. I know it’s there—I see it in his eyes when my kids rush to embrace him on his infrequent visits—but it’s buried down deep inside of him, warped and misshapen after years of living up to two such incredibly different ideas of manhood simultaneously.

When we left the movie theater yesterday, Chip turned to me and said, “Thank god we live in a different time.� And we do, yes, in many ways. But not as different as I wish it was. I came away from Brokeback Mountain remembering the things I love about men and the ways they’re just as imprisoned by outdated notions of gender roles and love as women are. I thought about the ways my boys have both outgrown the nail polish they used to request, the way the “boy aisles� at Target are still filled with war toys and the “girl aisles� with babies and Barbies.

I think about my father and my sons and my husband, and I want a world where they are free to be their ideal selves, without fear. Is that about love? I think it is.

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The following essay was written by Lin Ilsley of Dotty Nana

I arrived in London in the fall of 1968, full of the very beginnings of pregnancy and absolute trepidation at the thought of marriage to a very young man I hardly knew. I also had what I thought to be a fortune…$2,000, saved from a variety of jobs I’d had that summer. Cool jobs, actually and amazingly, jobs that really paid well. I was a cub reporter for “The Georgetowner,� a local DC paper that was actually fun to read. Then when that job finished, I phoned strangers and sold home delivery subscriptions to the NY Times. I got a buck for every sale and for two hours work, I was making close to $60 each night. That was the easiest money I ever made. My territory was NW (rich) Washington, DC and this was the first time the NY Times had been offered for home delivery. Then I went and danced on top of a bar at Henry’s on M Street in Georgetown. I was sort of a go-go girl but I danced barefoot in cut-offs and a t-shirt and made great money. So, armed with that two grand, I arrived in London. That we’re still married today, even happily, is a testament to dumb luck and love.

Customs cleared and baggage searched (no scanners then and all searching done by hand...customs took forever), I hesitantly walked into the confusion of Heathrow. On the flight I’d obsessed over details. I tried desperately to remember every nuance and subtlety of the man I was going to marry, but kept coming up with this amalgam picture…the features of all the boys I’d ever loved. I had known this man only three short weeks, but in that time I had determined, with all the conviction of youth, that he was the one. He and my godparent’s son visited our home for three short weeks and then he flew back to England and I went back to my summer jobs. I find it curious, that as I write I’m able to refer to my husband, Roger, as a man. Today I have a son some years older than my husband was when I married him.

Arrivals and departures are so casual today, but in 1968, one still dressed to travel. I seem to remember wearing something vaguely Mary Quantish. It was an A-line, black jersey knit minidress, with long sleeves, a stand-up collar and a nubby, front zipper that ran from just below the waist to the neck. I’d had my dark blond hair died black and cut into a very angled Sassoon cut and it was just starting to grow out so I had blond roots, not the best of looks for me. Dark opaque grey pantyhose completed my look. And so I looked up into the din of the arrivals area and I saw him and he was everything I knew he was but couldn’t shape in imagery on the plane and I felt better. I knew this new adventure, this new life of mine, would work out. Maybe not for years and years, but certainly for the short run. That’s the way people were beginning to think in the 60s.

The second week I was in England, the London Sunday Times began a series of articles that dealt with this brand new phenomenon that was sweeping the country. Perhaps not so new in the United States, but certainly assuming front page coverage in the British Isles…the subject was D.I.V.O.R.C.E., and the increasingly high numbers of people seeking it. Divorce still had a capitol “D� in those days and was whispered, much like AIDS or cancer is today. Since I was almost married, I decided to read up on Divorce. What I read almost convinced me that I would be lucky if my marriage lasted two years. I tried to be philosophical about my impending Divorce but sadness filled me every time I thought about it. I pondered over the fate of my as yet unborn child and shivered with dread at the thought of having to go back to my parents’ home, tail between my legs, baby in arms, begging for help. What I read assured me that divorce was indeed imminent because:

I was under 21
My husband was under 24
We had no money
I was moving to a new country far away from my parents
I had no close friends within 25 miles
We had known each other under a year (um, how about under a month)
I was pregnant
I was pregnant, and
Oh yeah, I was pregnant.
The handwriting was on the wall, that much was obvious and it filled me with gloom.

The inevitability of our future saddened me but hey, we had to find somewhere to live and so we began an apartment search, not knowing how difficult a task this would be. Whole areas of the East End of London were stillbomb-ravaged so housing was still at a premium: very scarce, very expensive, and very sub-standard. It might as well have been the day after the Blitz. Roger would search the classified section of the Evening Standard every night, circling what areas we could live in and what prices we could afford and then plan our strategy for the next day. I was used to modern apartment complexes in the Washington suburbs or wonderfully old apartment buildings deep in the city, heavy on charm and character. He was used to grotty bed-sits (efficiencies) entirely unsuitable for a married couple with a baby (ohmygod, a baby) on the way. Turns out we could barely afford one bedroom, much less two and we couldn’t afford to live anywhere but close(ish) to the nice parts of town. I wanted to live in Hampstead, but West Hampstead was the best we could do. He would call me every day from work and we’d rush to the listed apartments, trying to be the first in line. I couldn’t believe the shortage of housing. Roger explained it as being a post-war shortage. POST-WAR? When I thought of war, Vietnam came to mind, but in Europe, the Second World War wasn’t just in the history books, it was on street level, as well.

Anyway, we looked and we looked and we looked and finally, one day, I got this jubilant call from Roger. He’d run out on his lunch hour, armed with that day’s copy of The Evening Standard and had found the perfect apartment. I can clearly remember my excitement. Oh my god, he'd acheived the impossible, he'd found the perfect apartment. Little did I know, then, just how different were our opinions of perfect.

He had found a 3rd (2nd fl. Eur) floor ‘flat’ on a straight, treeless street in a marginal neighbourhood. Bonus points awarded for being equally as close to a good area as a bad area, I suppose. At one end of the street, Irish laborers toughed it out, their wives picking over second best in all the shops. At the other end, out-of-season fresh produce and Chinese wash carpets were cheerfully arranged in up-market shop windows. And even further along the road, not that far north of us was Hampstead, the place I wanted to live, the place where I was sure we could find the truly perfect apartment.

First impressions remain clear to this day and what really struck me initially as very odd about this flat was that we had to walk through other people’s apartments to get to ours. Okay, not their sitting rooms, but their hallways. I mean if they had to get up in the middle of the night to go to the loo, or they wanted to wander half-dressed through their flat, and we were coming or going at that moment, we would see them. The stairs ran straight up the middle of this terraced house, and the third floor (our perfect flat) was nothing more than the third floor of the house. And that third floor was a rotten, unsuitable, hardly perfect place to live.. Totally uninhabitable, in my estimation, but because we were almost married, because I was pregnant, because we had no money, because he was handsome, because he knew London and the housing stock, I said, “Yes, yes, it’s…perfect,� grimly lying through my teeth.

I wandered through looking at the rooms; all two and a bit of them. Front room/living room, with a ghastly pink-tiled coal fireplace (no other visible source of heat, certainly no central heating). Roger read my thoughts and said he’d put a gas fire in immediately. Good idea, I silently thought. The miniscule bedroom overlooked a tiny concrete backyard and all the other tiny yards that stretched up and down the street, full of washing and children’s bikes, and grime; layers and layers of grime. Then the kitchen, as it was so inaptly described which, in truth, was the short entrance hallway to our flat. Our apartment door opened into this room. You know, climb a couple of flights of stairs and when you feel your breath is coming ragged and fast, boom, there’s an opaque, glass-panelled door that opens into our kitchen. It was a few chipped, open cupboards, a sink, draining board and a tiny gas stove perched on four legs, circa 1910. Oh yeah, and a grubby, peeling linoleum floor. That was it. Then the bathroom, a fairly big room with a grand curved, legged and chipped tub, a big gas water heater on the wall that you actually had to light, with a match, and…a sink. “Where’s the sodding toilet?� I silently screamed. My mind had already screamed “Where’s the sodding refrigerator� when we had toured the kitchen. There was no room for a fridge in the kitchen but there was more than enough room for a loo.

I quickly ran through the tiny flat again, eyes raking every corner and the solo 3’ wide closet. Just as I thought, no toilet. I stared at Roger in disbelief and then hissed coldly, “Where’s the fucking toilet?� He looked at me, quite brightly, and said, “Oh, it’s close, just down that flight of stairs. We share it with the landlady, Mrs. Schwartz.� It was at this moment that I knew for certain that Roger and I were fundamentally different, with completely different ideas as to what was perfect, much less necessary. I had grown up with my own full bathroom, sharing with no one, and now I would be sharing with a complete stranger, and my landlady at that. “Show it to me,� I snarled.

We picked our way down the stairs, Mrs. Schwartz leading the way. She kept on and on about how many other people wanted this flat. I made faces and stuck my tongue out at the back of her balding head. Bottom of the stairs, frosted glass door, The Bathroom. Excellent. Such privacy…another one of those fuzzy-glassed doors. A toilet, a sink, and a shower-curtained tub, the rail barely discernible beneath big old lady knickers and support stockings, that was it. I glanced at Roger and shook my head, silently giving him one strong message. “This.Will.Not. Do.� He misinterpreted my look, not knowing me terribly well, and said. “Great, we’ll take it.� I rolled my eyes, and watched him hand over the deposit. Seventy pounds. One month’s rent and one month’s deposit. Then I walked upstairs and waited for him, in shock.

I practiced what I would say to him and when he walked in, I just said, “I can’t live here. It’s awful. How could you even begin to think that I could live here,� and I burst into tears. Something I did with alarming frequency through my pregnancy. We moved in the next week. You see, there really was a housing shortage and I had a lot to learn, not only about living on a budget, but also about making do. I mentally tallied all these things up, thinking about the D word and how forces seemed to be conspiring to make it inevitable.

One gets used to things. We all know it’s a fact, but it sometimes amazes me when that which is untenable one day, a month later becomes quite normal. That’s precisely what happened on Dynham Road. Within a couple of weeks, I was beginning to know the shopkeepers, my tube station was predictably crowded at certain times and empty at others and the rhythms of life in this corner of London gradually revealed themselves to me. I busied myself with decorating this little space and Roger and I used our Saturdays to spend over-the-odds for curtains and carpeting.

Before any primping of the room could truly happen, though, Roger had to remove the pink-tiled, circa between-the-wars, ugly fireplace surround. There was no way that I would haul coal up and down the two flights of stairs. So, courtesy of the building site where he worked as a young civil engineer, he arrived home late one night with a serious-looking sledge hammer and some other tools of destruction.

Saturday morning, with no warning to Mrs. Schwartz that the destruction was about to happen, he took his first swing. While he had told her of his intention a couple of weeks prior, she’d agreed he could do it, but had no idea that the deed was imminent. The whole building seemed to shudder as reluctant tiles pulled away from old plaster. The second swing cracked and then Mrs. Schwartz burst through the kitchen door. Her balding head was more noticeable than usual due to her deep, red coloring. She looked horrified as she rushed into the sitting room. As Roger brought the hammer down again, Mrs. Schwartz screamed. He stopped, abruptly and turned to look at her. “What do you think you are doing?� she screamed. “What I told you I would be doing,� Roger answered with an equal amount of passion. “I told you I was going to remove this surround and replace it with a new, gas fire.� “You didn’t say you were going to tear the surround out, just that you were going to put in a gas fire.�

I didn’t know the details of their prior discussion and so stood mutely at the edge of the room. Then, she started screaming at him again, about eviction this time. I turned and ran to the bedroom and shut the door. In my delicate state I couldn’t stand any dissention. Behind closed doors I could hear her wailing at the damage and the ruin that was now her third floor flat. Roger screamed something else, and finished off with, “…you stupid cow.� I was straining at the door trying to hear when I heard the window being thrown up with some force, then dead silence. I waited a moment, hearing nothing, and then rushed from the bedroom. I was convinced that he had thrown Mrs. Schwartz out the window. But the scene that greeted me was something quite different. Yes, the window was thrown open, but Mrs. Schwartz was standing, silently for once. She was not at all dead. Roger had thrown the window open and stuck his head out, purely in frustration. He’d felt like tossing Mrs. Schwartz out, but wisely chose to stick his head out instead. He slowly gathered his equilibrium and eased himself back into the room. “Get out, Mrs. Schwartz. You came in here uninvited, now leave. I assure you that when I am finished this will look better than it did before I started tearing it out. The Gas Company comes tomorrow to connect a lead, then the fire will go in.�

She didn’t utter a word, just silently turned to leave. I was in the doorway and moved aside for her saying, “Mrs. Schwartz, don’t ever walk in this flat again unannounced. We rent it from you, but legally, you have no right to just barge in here.� She just looked at me and gave a curt nod. Roger sat on the floor, in the sitting room, head in hands. “I could have hit her,� he said, looking alarmed at his own feelings. “I know, but you didn’t,� I reassured him. “That’s all that counts.�

He picked up the sledge hammer and starting whacking away again. It didn’t take long and the whole thing was off the wall, leaving an unsightly, gaping hole. “I’ll take this out to the tip and then start patching the plaster,� he said, more to himself than to me. I nodded and said, “Well, I guess I’ll go get something for dinner.� We were both shaken by the confrontation with Mrs. Schwartz, yet oddly depleted. No more words were necessary. We had stood together, as a couple. As unsettling as the argument had been, I think we both were somewhat comforted by being a team. I know I was.

By the following week, a much-too-good, expensive, pale-grey Wilton carpet was fitted on the living room floor while deep, cranberry red curtains, made by a local seamstress and a bargain by American standards (still stretching our meager budget) were hung. I think Roger felt some excitement at finally having a place to live in that felt truly comfortable. I know what my feelings at the time were…I remember them all too clearly. I wanted to immediately disguise the fact that I was living in sub-standard accommodation. I was making, or at least trying to make, the proverbial silk purse out of a sow’s ear. And then our Tomotom furniture arrived. It was as modern and statement-making as any I’d ever seen. It felt like fun furniture … whimsical furniture. I adored it. I can remember Roger staring at it, probably saying to himself, “What were we thinking of?� but it made me laugh out loud. The huge, round red chair with the big yellow cushions was sized for two people. It was a circular love seat. I plopped into it and gestured for him to come over. We both fit. I loved it. No focusing on the kitchen or the bathroom. Our bedroom had a beautiful, old brass bed, one tiny closet, one chest of drawers and one window without a view. Our kitchen was a corridor, no window, a few makeshift cupboards and an ancient stove. Our bathroom had a bath, a sink and a wall heater, but for once I focused on none of that. I shut the living room door and felt that I finally was home.

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The following entry was written by Sleepless Mama, of http://sleeplessmama.blogspot.com

I remember the young men I was in love with once. I remember things I liked about them, how they made me feel, sometimes even how nice they smelled. I remember quiet love, tender love, innocence, passion, all those things. I remember some things just working against us, like time, or age, or our parents, or conflicting personalities and/or goals.

And when I think of these men, something inside me whispers, Yes, I do still love them. They were special. They were part of me, part of my youth, part of my growth. It doesn't matter that things didn't work out. That doesn't make the emotions I felt any less real.

A wise man once told me that even though he and his first wife had divorced, it did not mean he stopped loving her, or that he loved his second wife any less. It only meant that he and his first wife were not able to get along, not able to communicate in a way that would make them a harmonious family.

I thought about that today, when I saw a man I had deep feelings for once, but who was never really my boyfriend. I suppose you could say we were friends, but really, he was my sunshine during a depressing time in my life. He always knew how to make me feel better. It doesn't matter why it never went further than that, because what we had was overwhelmingly positive and lovely.

I delighted in seeing him today, in joking around with him and two others our age; we were all young together once, all friends, all part of the same church, all part of each others' lives. Was I there for the nostalgia? Or for a love that has never left me? Or for both? I don't know. He is married now, as am I. I don't hold any foolish ideas about feelings he might have for me, and I have no expectations. It was enough, I think, to see him for a few minutes, to laugh with him, to stand in the hallway with our old buddies and have odd conversation.

Then I had to run, because my husband and daughters were waiting in the van. And I was happy to go to them, just as I had been happy to remain in the hall.

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The following entry has been written for Mommybloggers.com by Tammie Willis of Soul Gardening.

For the last several years, I have been actively searching for ways to be as open and transparent as I can be with myself and with others. This is important to me because I want to love myself and the people in my life as truthfully as possible.

Love is such a gift. It takes an incredible amount of our energy, and sometimes our courage to give and receive it. I don't think it would be possible for me to love myself or for anyone else to truly love me without as much honesty as I can muster. This means acknowledging and embracing the good and the bad parts of myself and sharing my efforts with the people I care about.

Everyone who has children tells the rest of us: "Having a child will change you forever". That phrase echoes in my mind and in my heart as I think about and strive for love in my life. I'm not a mother, although my husband and I are trying to become parents. I'm 34 years old and I have been without my own parents for half as long as I've been alive. I lost my mother to cancer and my father to himself a long time before my mother died. It's been a long time since I've experienced the kind of love that parents have for their children and it may be awhile yet before I am a parent myself.

I've thought about this a lot and it's hard for me to know if unconditional love exists outside of the relationship between a parent and a child. I love my husband more than I have ever loved anyone in my life and I know, without a doubt that he feels the same way about me. But can I truly say that there is nothing that could be done that would make him stop loving me, or me him? I don't have an answer to that question.

I do know that what I have with my husband is a once in a lifetime opportunity and that we were meant to find one another. I know that this weekend, when he held me and wiped my tears while I cried and told him I feel like I'm broken because I can't get pregnant, I was exactly where I am supposed to be and I am so thankful for that.

I believe the reason women say having a child radically changes them is that the kind of love experienced as a mother is an unconditional and life-altering experience. Loving a child and being loved in return, knowing that you would give your life to keep them safe and healthy - must change a person in the very core of their being. That idea resonates with me. I hope I am fortunate enough to experience it again someday from the other side.

In the meantime, I focus on loving myself and my husband and the people in our lives as completely as possible. It is the most difficult thing I have ever done because I want to devote myself fully to this endeavor and it is frightening sometimes. But I'm discovering, the more I give, the greater my capacity to love and be loved in return. And for now that is all I need. For now, that is truly enough.

Sometimes allowing myself to feel this way truly astounds me. Sometimes I am amazed. This feeling is what makes me want to become a parent and simultaneously terrifies me with its intensity at times. But I'm trying to get my arms around it and hold it tight. It's a gift I'm giving to myself - the same one that I hope to someday pass along to my child.

Whatever happens, I'll be ready. The love that exists in my life today is preparing me for what the future brings. And that is the best gift of all.

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The following entry is a favorite from the archives of Len Northfield's retired blog Fast Eddie's Bullet.

I am a father.

I have no idea whether I am a good father or a bad father, I only know that this is what I am and this is my purpose in life. It sits well with me and I am happy.

In the nine and a half years that I have been a father I have been flying by the seat of my pants. You see my own father died before I was born and so I have no reference, no guiding experience of what I should or shouldn't do or be… but I try. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose but I guess I will have to wait another 20 years or so to see whether I did it well or not, to get the report card from my kids.

But my greatest joy is something that my father never had the opportunity to experience. I have a son… I have a SON.

I could never have anticipated what that would mean or what an impact having a son would have on me. My first two children were girls and I loved them with every ounce of existence but to have a son? When he was born I was over the moon but almost immediately a fear set in. How could I be Daddy to a boy? I even resented his existence for a time. I had been happy and content with the girls in my life, I knew girls, I knew women but I knew nothing about boys. When I looked at him I would feel an enormous empty ache fill my chest, grief for my father, my daddy; that strange figure in black and white who left me alone. I didn't want my boy because I knew that I would fail him, I knew that he would hate me and grow up resenting me because I didn't know how to be. I couldn't explain these feelings to Amber or to anyone, I mean, it was warped wasn't it? I was a bad man for even thinking such thoughts. What kind of a father felt these things towards an infant?

So all I could do was continue. I saw this little lump of male flesh grow into a real baby with a smile the size of the moon and with the biggest blue eyes of any boy child I had ever seen. I watched him go through the same stages the girls had but he seemed slower, less able, somehow less of me. Everyone told me that he was just like me, in miniature… I only saw Amber. I just could not see anything of myself in this child and whilst I loved him, there was no connection, I couldn't feel the bond that I had read about… this father – son thing, there wasn't the tie there was between my girls and me.

Then suddenly, when he was about two, he started needing me. Not in the way the girls needed me but in a strange and different way. He needed something ONLY I could give, he needed me. The more he needed me, the more I warmed to him and the more my soul thawed. I saw so much in him, so much that I had never seen in myself. I saw the growth of care, the bravery of a three year old, the concern and love of a four year old for his sisters, the insatiable curiosity of an agile mind, the unquenchable thirst for life of a boy, the sheer joy of loving and living. But most of all I saw the growth and development of a relationship the likes of which, in my wildest dreams, I never thought possible. I saw the flowering of this strange, unknowable father – son friendship.

Every waking moment I sought him out, not to interfere or to hamper, but to watch, to listen, to experience him. I wanted to hold him and to smell him; I wanted to be close to him constantly. I learned his ways, his moods, his frustrations. Each day, as I learned him more I saw little pieces of myself… the lost things, the frozen things, and as I saw them I began to see who I was, for the very first time in my life.

My boy loves me with a raging, open, unsullied and unconditional love. He loves me like I have never been loved. He loves me the way I have always needed to be loved and I, in return, love him like a hurricane. My boy is teaching me about myself and he is letting me see myself through his eyes. My boy is helping me grow up and my lack is a lack no longer. He has birthed the man in me. My boy is unique, he is only himself; he is the brightest star, the sweetest note, the widest ocean. He is the blue of the sky and the freshness of the breeze. My boy is the sun on my shoulders and the road beneath my feet, he is my life and if anyone ever tells me he is like me I swell with pride and know that I could only ever hope to be like him.

My son is the father I never had.

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The following entry is a favorite from the archives of MommaK of Petroville.

Today the sweet man I met and fell in love with when I was barely 20 is turning 35. I found a letter that I wrote to him while we were dating and I wanted to share some of it with you.

July 1994

When I first met you, you were larger than life. You showed me how to smile and you brought out the laughter that my heart was afraid to hear. I fell for you hard and would have followed you anywhere. You were my knight in shining armor, my hero and most of all my best friend.

You are still all of these things to me, only much more. Most importantly, you love me for who I am. I have never met a soul as pure as yours. It makes me feel as though fate had a hand in our paths crossing.

When I think of you I see fields of daisies, fireworks and family. I know in my heart that the only place I'll ever want to call home is with you. I love you.

This letter is poignant for so many reasons. I did follow him "anywhere" and 12 years later he is still my knight in shining armor and best friend.

On a bookshelf in our home, there are a set of photo albums. These albums are full of special moments, birthdays and holidays. But they also hold images of a dream come true - my girlhood dream of daisies, fireworks and family.

I am so blessed to be able to spend the rest of my days with this wonderful man.

Happy 35th Birthday Sweetheart!!

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The following entry was written by Marla Good of Hello, Josephine

I’ve just crawled out of her little “big girl� bed, leaving Josephine sleeping sweetly. We fell asleep together, after an exhausting chapter of Charlotte’s Web – Chapter XII, A Meeting. It’s not that it was one of the more eventful chapters, I assure you if you’re not acquainted; or remind you if you’re recalling it from memory either long-ago or recently refreshed. You see, Josephine is almost two, and on page 86, in response to Charlotte’s roll call, the goslings, one through seven respond “Bee-bee-bee!� “Bee-bee-bee!� “Bee-bee-bee!� “Bee-bee-bee!� “Bee-bee-bee!� “Bee-bee-bee!� “Bee-bee-bee!�. This, when you are overtired and two and my daughter, is the best thing ever, and must be repeated immediately. Three or four times. Then, when trying to continue the roll call, it’s impossible to get past the sheep to the lambs, then the lambs to Templeton, without requests for more baby goslings saying “Bee-bee-bee!�. Then, as the chapter continues and the child who is now no longer sleepy continues to ask for more baby goslings to say “Bee-bee-bee!�, I do so because I love her face when I make her happy by saying “Bee-bee-bee!�. But, because I am enjoying the story and I do want to see her sleep – oh how do I ever want her to sleep – I try to work it in, delicately stringing it throughout the rest of the chapter, trying to retain some sense and almost seamlessly making it part of the story.

And then, since Chapter XII is rather short and by Chapter XIII, Good Progress, I am still making good progress with the “Bee-bee-bee!� insertions and Josephine’s sleep is imminent, it goes like this:

“Far into the night, while the other creatures slept, the goslings sometimes saying “Bee-bee-bee!� in their sleep, Charlotte worked on her web. First she ripped out a few of the orb lines near the center. She left the radial lines alone, as they were needed for support. As she worked, the goslings said “Bee-bee-bee!� in their sleep, and her eight legs were a great help to her. So were her teeth. She loved to hear the goslings say “Bee-bee-bee!�, and she loved to weave, and she was an expert at it. When she was finished ripping things out, the goslings said “Bee-bee-bee!� in their sleep, and her web looked something like this:�

At that point, I think Josephine was asleep, or close to it since when I went to show her the picture her eyelids were shut and her face smooth and untroubled, but I kept reading to myself, occasionally forgetting not to add the odd “Bee-bee-bee!� in places. Then I drifted off myself, the thunk of the book hitting my chest a minor disturbance in my own satisfying and much needed nap.

Of course our idiot cat found a way to wake me up, with what I think was the sound of her near-empty milk glass from lunch being knocked off the table. I’ll investigate that soon – but at that point Josephine was so warm and snuggly and it is so gloomy and cold today that I decided to stay snuggled in with her for a little while longer. The only other reading material within arm’s reach was an Olivia book and three picture books with odd images of things called “Skittles� instead of bowling pins because they’re British, and so I picked up Charlotte’s Web, and read to myself.

The last time I held this book was in third grade. Mrs. Nesbitt would read it to us after lunch, giving us the opportunity to follow along in our own copies, to draw, or to just put our heads down and listen. She was a wonderful reader, and I hear her voice in my head as I read to my daughter. I think of all the other books she shared with us – The Trumpet of the Swan, Charlie the Champion of the World, James and the Giant Peach and so many others. That was when I learned to love books, and now when I see the vintage copies of my old friends in second hand bookstores, I can’t resist. I had been waiting for Josie to be more ready to listen to chapter books, and the introduction of her “big girl� bed was the perfect opportunity. It is very hard to read through the bars of a crib, though that hadn’t stopped me. Now, the thought has occurred to me that I’m simply boring her to sleep and cramping her as I huddle next to her, but let’s not harsh my mellow today. I’m writing about love.

Because I had forgotten some of the finer points of the book – not how it ends (SPOILER ALERT: WILBUR IS OKAY), I couldn’t help but read on and finish it. I made it eighty-six and more pages aloud, patiently not reading ahead. But I blew it today. I am reading it from Charlotte’s viewpoint now, as a mother – not Fern’s. I too now have a magnum opus, who happens to like to hear “Bee-bee-bee!� over and over – but she is still my finest work. And parts of the story that I never would have given a second thought now touch my oxytocin-soaked heart, and left me weeping next to my sleepy babe.

“All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur — this lovely world, these precious days...�, and “After all, what’s a life, anyway We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.� “Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.�

But as we know, the story doesn’t end there – her five hundred and fourteen children are born in the Spring, and they are some comfort to Wilbur. Until they leave!

“At last one little spider took time enough to stop and talk to Wilbur before making its balloon. ‘We’re leaving here on the warm updraft. This is our moment for setting forth. We are aeronauts and we are going out into the world to make webs for ourselves.’ ‘But where?’ asked Wilbur. ‘Wherever the wind takes us. High, low. Near, far. East, west. North, south. We take to the breeze, we go as we please.�

(I’ll wait while you get your tissue.) (Okay, some children and grandchildren always stay, so feel better.)

And I am blubbering.

I love this book. I love Mrs. Nesbitt for teaching me to love reading, and for teaching me to read aloud well so that my child might love words too. I love my daughter, who way back in third grade wasn’t even an itch in my pants but is now my own heart wiggling around on her wee bed and asking for more “Bee-bee-bee!�s. I love the husband that gave her to me, and the home we’ve made for us to live in. I love the gloomy day that compelled me to snuggle up closer for that little while in order to rediscover how that story about a spider’s love for a little pig can bring all this to the surface in a weepy snotty mess. I’m not quite doing the ugly cry, and a cup of tea and a load of laundry will soon have me mired in reality – but I’m in love with my life right now – 5:20pm, Monday February 6, 2006.

The cat, I am not so in love with (it was indeed the milk glass) and before I sat down to write this, I made a phone call to the vet’s. It’s time to have his wee balls cut off. And dammit, if the toddler is sleeping this late, she’ll be up until ten.

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The following entry was written by Deborah Klosky of Spot-On

Yes, yes, since it's Valentine's Day let's talk about love. What is it, anyway?

Maybe it's going ahead and having the second baby by the same father when you already know what labor's like, instead of waiting for science to advance enough to let men carry the pregnancy (Arnold Schwarzenegger style, and wasn't that an appalling sight?). Oh wait, is that love or sleep-deprivation-induced memory loss?

OK, how about taking the kids to the park first thing in the morning, letting the mom (snooze-loving me) sleep in; when it's not Valentine's Day and not Mothers' Day and not my birthday but just a regular old Sunday morning that's just made for catching up on your sleep, and how lovely that does feel. Is that love? You know, if it's not, it's certainly close enough for me.

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The following essay was written by Krisco of Crib Ceiling

I was taught, as a child – and I think it was in catechism* - that love is an action word.

I had no idea what that meant, but I was sure they were wrong. Love was that weird, gurgly feeling I had in my stomach when I sneaked a peak over at John Mahoney at the next table.

I do know, however, looking back, that the times I've hurt people most in my life was when I failed to act. When I had hurt them – inadvertently, thoughtlessly, through my own insecurities or obtuseness – and failed to apologize, or when I failed to actively meet with my friends, talk to them, help them. Thinking, they know how I feel about them! They know how important they are! Or, they know I didn’t mean that!

And I may have hurt them, but I also paid, over time, dearly, with the loss of some of those people from my life.

(Dang! Why didn’t they give examples in catechism?)

I have also heard, somewhere, that a mother’s love is the greatest love. Based on work alone, I’d say that is true. Forget childbirth as something to hold over your kid’s head; It’s all the sleepless nights, and the holding, feeding clothing, loving – actively loving – your children, not to mention the worrying, counseling, disciplining, arguing, attending choir concerts, and whatever else I have ahead of me when my children are older, that is the work, and the love, of motherhood.

And, of course, this is the kind of love I would do again in a second. I feel incredibly lucky to be the mother of my children. And I guess that’s part of what love is – I really don’t (mostly) mind the work.

It also makes me realize how little work I did for other people I have loved in my life.

And, of course, they say marriage is work. Between making a living, caring for kids and taking care of the logistics of life, you have to carve out time to be together as a couple, and to work on things, and to reconnect.

So now, some twenty….okay, twenty-five….OKAY THIRTY years since catechism, I have finally learned just one
of the lessons they tried to teach me.

Love is an action word.

**For those who aren’t Catholic, didn’t marry one and has somehow managed to miss every (mis)representation
of Catholicism ever put out there – "catechism" is religion class for the public school kids. Just fyi, it’s always on Wednesday afternoon - I don’t know why. Another part of catechism I didn't understand.

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The following entry was written by Stephanie Alford, Ph.D. in progress - BA in progress. Her personal blog is Blither, Blather, Bloviate.

Current national averages indicate that roughly one in three girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18. - Dr. Drew Pinsky or see for more info.

"Fighting settles only who is rich, strong, cruel and physically brave, but it can never settle who is right, intelligent or morally brave. As a remedy for wrongs, it is fundamentally a mistake ... it is indulging in temper instead of using brains." Mary Ware Dennett

"Love? What do you know about love?" Her disdainful voice rattles around in my head. I think it's Adelaide from "Guys & Dolls" as she gives Nathan what for yet again for not marrying her. Then he breaks into the song "So Sue Me."

What I know about love isn't much. When I was a girl, I had a highly theoretical idea of what it should be. And what it should be wasn't what was going on in the maelstrom of my home life. As I got older, it took on the Cinderella sheen of a Prince Charming who would rescue me and love me, again in that theoretical way.

Older and older I got, my ideas of theoretical love got put to the test and failed at every turn. Sex wasn't love. Men came and went and they were all as damaged as I was, in some cases even worse. They, too, only had vague theoretical notions of what love was.

7 years from the last disastrous relationship and I have done much healing and growing. And I still don't know much about love. I do know there's a difference between romantic love, chocolate love, and love for friends and family.

Those 6 girls and 1 boy are not my children, yet they are and the joy these children give me must be love. I light up when they are around and hug them and kiss them into embarassment and then, they return the favour. I never fail to tell them I love them. I weep when they pull out of the driveway for their long drive home to another state.

I adore my sister-in-law. Love my few friends with pride and joy, looking forward to the next time we talk or get together. In my brightest hours, I still don't know what love is but know that lack of romantic love doesn't mean I am incomplete.

I think Adelaide had it wrong. Nathan loved her, he just didn't show her or tell her in the manner she wanted him to. And Nathan had it wrong too. But then, maybe none of us ever get it completely right and it really is just a matter of degree and finding the right theory.

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The following entry was written by Kate of Katespot.com

Love means making a fresh pot of coffee in the morning.
Love means helping to make the bed.
Love means saying I'm sorry.
Love means sharing the remote.
Love means a great cuddle.
Love means great sex.
Love means family.

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The following entry was written by MoMMY of Mom of Many Male Youngsters

Love.

There are so many kinds of love.

The love you feel for your children. The absolute, sell your soul, wear your heart outside your body, do whatever it takes to keep them safe and happy kind of love. Or rather LYVE.

The love you feel for your parents. The underlying, unconditional, scarred and scraped and tangled web of love over time. They will always be your parents. And no matter what they've done or haven't done, no matter how many times you've hated them/loved them/hated them there is a love.

The rush of first love.

The desperation of unreturned love.

The heartbreak of lost love.

And the love that tethers us to the earth while letting us float free. The love that is based in friendship. That one person you can always talk with, turn to when you are in need. It may be friend or spouse or life partner. It may be low maintenance. It may be easy. Or. It may be hard. It may require constant care. It can be tangled and twisted and forgotten and rediscovered. It smoothes the sharp edges of life and sometimes creates it's own jagged peaks and valleys.

And we must never forget the love of life. Without which this world is a truly sad and desperate place. We must love ourselves and the fact we are ALIVE.

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This entry was written for Mommybloggers by Susan Wagner of Friday Playdate.

Before I had children of my own, children who are able to be both almost unbearably cute and virtually unlovable in the same twenty minute period (multiple times a day), I used to daydream about what it would be like to be the mommy. I looked forward to things like dance recitals and soccer games, but what I most anticipated was the preschool music program.

Because really, what could be cuter than a dozen or so four and five-year-olds singing made-up songs about whatever Hallmark holiday we were celebrating? And then all sitting down at teeny tiny tables to eat themed cookies with their beaming mommies and daddies? The love would be tangible, I was sure. And the cuteness would be enough to kill me.

I’m not a complete idiot, despite what you may think. I’ve read The Mommy Myth; I know that the people at Johnson&Johnson and InStyle magazine work long hard hours to make it appear that motherhood is one photogenic
moment after another. I know that, in real life, those moments--where the kids are playing nicely and maybe even sharing and I am not yelling or hiding in a closet--are few and far between and virtually always occur when no one has a camera. I am aware that the media has created standards of Mommy Perfection that none of us can live up to. But still! Preschoolers! Singing! How could it NOT be cute? How could it NOT be a moment when I would love my sons so much my heart would ache?

In my media-fueled daydream of the preschool music program, I am always wearing something stylish and appropriate and I am always having a good hair day; my smaller child is always entranced by the singing and sits nicely in his chair through the whole performance; I have my video camera ready to roll. My son sings his songs in his beautiful voice; he follows directions; he is wearing a shirt with a collar, and maybe even a little sweater. He comes and hugs me when he is done singing. I laugh and chat with the other preschool mommies, who are all my friends. It is all very cute.

Instead, in my real life, Tuesday’s Valentine’s Day music program will most likely go like this: on the morning of said program, I will oversleep and maybe get a shower (or maybe not). I will realize, too late, that I need a haircut. I will be unable to find anything to wear, as all of my pants are currently too small and most of my shirts are in the dirty laundry. I will throw on something weather-appropriate (meaning warm) and race out the door with
both kids. I will drop Henry at school and dash to Starbucks for a cup of coffee. Charlie will insist on a snack, so I will buy him a scone that he will smash all over the back seat of my car. We will get back to Henry’s school
EXACTLY on time, which is technically late as all the other parents are there. I will have to leave my unfinished coffee in the car.

Charlie will refuse to sit in his own chair and will instead spend the entire time squirming in my lap. I will start to sweat because the classroom--now filled with 14 kids and their smiling parents--will be hot. I will not be able to
take pictures because I have left the camera in the car, and even if I had it, I can’t put Charlie down without causing him to wail loudly. At some point I will realize that I have to pee.

Henry will be overwhelmed by the singing, as he is every time he has music class. He will not be able to sit still. He will get up and dance, even though there is no dancing in this program. He will sing louder than the other
children, possibly in a funny voice. He will make his friend Luke laugh, which will get them both in trouble with the music teacher, who is trying her best to be smiley and kind for the parents. He will shout out the names of songs. He will spontaneously sing his own version of at least one song on the program. The other parents will tell me how cute this is, but I will feel certain that once they are in their cars away from me they will wonder what is wrong with that kid. Or what is wrong with his mommy. I will wonder it, too.

When the singing is over, the teachers will serve a holiday-themed snack. They will invite Charlie (the only sibling in attendance, as everyone else has child care) to sit at the table and eat with the big kids. He will accept a cookie, with frosting, but refuse to sit at the table, instead rubbing the frosting all over my dry-clean-only sweater (the last clean thing in my closet). He will ask for a drink but cry when Henry’s teacher brings him a juice box because he wanted ME to get it, not the teacher. He will refuse to be put down and I will be painfully aware that he weighs 35 pounds.

I will not socialize with the other mommies, mostly because I will be too busy trying to keep Charlie from sticking his cookie down the front of my sweater but also because this is our second preschool in two years and I don’t know
anyone and frankly, I will be too hot and too stressed out to even try making small talk. They will all seem very nice and very sympathetic, and will offer to help with Charlie or to get Henry a snack, but I will be the only one with kids
who are not doing what they’ve been asked, in an orderly fashion. And the only one with frosting on her sweater.

And in that moment, I will love my sons so much my heart will ache.

I talk to new mothers all the time who tell me how they cried when their babies had that first round of immunizations. And I think, oh, no, that’s not the thing that will break your heart. Over the past five and half years, Henry has spent ten days in the NICU, had two ER-worthy injuries and dental surgery that required complete sedation. He has been diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder. Charlie has had stomach flue and ear infections and strep throat and a cyst on his neck that might have been any number of things but turned out to be nothing. At every one of these crises, I have been calm and collected; I have dealt with fevers and blood and vomit; I have learned about speech therapy and behavior modification and ADHD meds. I always know where my health insurance id card is. I know the shortest route from anywhere in town to the hospital; I have the pediatrician’s number memorized. In every typical catastrophe, all those parenting moments you
dread when your baby is new and fragile, I have wrapped my sons in my loving arms and protected them from the world. I have been a tower of strength.

But those music programs may well be the death of me.

The times that I love my sons the most are the moments when they are struggling the hardest to get along in the world: when they are acting up or acting out, when they are over stimulated and overtired, when they are not at
their best. But it is a difficult kind of love because there is typically no cuteness to temper the struggle, and, quite honestly, because at those moments they are not the children I expected them to be but the children they really are. But rather than the idealized love we see in the media, this is real love, the kind that makes us feel like we will--and can--do anything for our children.

I only wish I could be wearing a clean sweater while I was doing it.

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The following gem was written by Pamalamadingdong of Shut Up and Run!

Love is not smothering you with your own pillow when you wake me with your snoring for the 111th night in a row.

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The following entry was written for Mommybloggers.com by Leigh Ann of The Mom Squad

For Valentine's Day I have been chosen to write a short essay on Love from the Goddesses that reside at MommyBloggers. Me! OK, I deleted the e-mail by mistake, so it is possible that it may have gone out to just a few others, but it came to ME! I'm humbled and honored and have accepted this great challenge. My one shot to show myself to the world. I shall grasp it with... Crap, what the heck am I going to write? I need to be witty, yet poignant, or something like that. Again, I deleted the e-mail. Anyway, it doesn't matter, I did what any sane person would do and Googled Love. I found the Love Calculator . A truly ingenious tool. It can predict the success of a relationship just by using your parent-given names. So I threw myself and Brett in for kicks. This is what I learned from the highly sophisticated tool (take that last word any way you want):

Love Calculator results
These are the results of the calculations by Dr. Love:
Leigh Ann _____
Brett Terry ____
0 %

Dr. Love thinks a relationship might work out between Leigh Ann ___ and Brett Terry ___, but the chance is very small. A successful relationship is possible, but you both have to work on it. Do not sit back and think that it will all work out fine, because it might not be working out the way you wanted it to. Spend as much time with each other as possible. Again, the chance of this relationship working out is very small, so even when you do work hard on it, it still might not work out.

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The following entry was written by Jeneane Sessum of Allied.

Unknowing

And all the while, there is loss in love.

The rain comes down, uneven cadence, down, and I sink in to memories, at six, knowing love by its starched dress shirt and sandpaper cheeks. Love is the rain coming down, a flood of remembering.

How much pain there is in love.

I push it away, leave it, forget it, outrun it. And what is there to be afraid of? Only Everything.

The fear of loss builds walls between hearts. So it is: before I can love you, I must truly lose you.

Lose you completely, become paralyzed by “without.�

I am telling you my secret. Do you love me enough to keep it?

Helene Cixous says:

"There is a point where the unknown begins. The secret other, the other secret, the other itself. The other that the other does not know. What is beautiful in the relation to the other, that moves us, what overwhelms us the most -- that is love -- is when we glimpse a part of what is secret to him or her, what is hidden, that the other does not see; as if there were a window by which we see a certain heart beating. And this secret that we take by surprise, we do not speak of it; we keep it. That is to say, we keep it: we do not touch it. We know, for example, where the other's vulnerable heart is situated; and we do not touch it; we leave it intact. This is love."

I am telling you this: I have lived my life at the crossing of fear and loss, stepped down into the absence of what sustained me, unwrapped its embrace. The intensity of what “is not� is unrelenting.

When you come to me in my undoing, it is that much sweeter.

Remembering but real.

Lover, daughter, mother, self.

Come back to me, she said.

Come back to me, she said because I have brought loss back to her remembering. There is no way for her to numb it; she tries. Can we reconcile, she said. I am all she has left to lose, even though she has much more.

She can never know how much I love her in the despair of my losing her -- she has never “not known.�

I am learning.

Cixous says:

“It is the biggest; it is far off. At the end of the path of attention, of reception, which is not interrupted but which continues into what little by little becomes the opposite of comprehension. Loving not knowing. Loving: not knowing.�

I lose; I get lost. It is all in love.

And I will keep your secret.

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The following entry was written by DaniGirl from Postcards from the Mothership

I think it was a movie that I was watching once, or maybe a book. The medium escapes me, but the message lives on. The Naïve Young Girl was asking the Wise Old Woman for advice on love and marriage, and the Wise Old Woman confided, "It's all about making sure you never fall out of love at the same time."

Those words resonated with me, and stay with me to this day. Because being a parent is hard on a marriage. Parenting babies, toddlers and preschoolers can be really, really hard on a marriage. And when it comes right down to it, making sure you never fall out of love at the same time - or, perhaps more accurately, never forget to be in love - is sage advice.

It would be easy to take the love of your partner for granted, to assume that even in neglect, it continues to bind you together without conscious effort. It is far too easy to assume love will prosper unaided, unattended, and of its own accord.

Loving my boys is easy. They take up so much of my every thought that sometimes they crowd out any other contenders. The dog, the friends, the husband - formerly the centres of my universe, they all get short shrift now because all my attention is sucked up by my love-needy boys.

I'm writing this in lieu of a little string tied to my finger, to remind me to take the time to love my husband. I need to love him with the same heart-rending intensity with which I love our boys. And I need to know that he loves me the same way.

In the hectic life we're living, we have to find ways to be more than just housemates, friends, parents and co-pilots. We have to remember to love each other deeply, passionately, and infinitely.

When the kids have grown and moved away, it will be just us again. Just the two of us, as we started out six years ago. And I hope we'll be more in love than ever.

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The following entry was written by Madge of Mainely Madge.

Almost from the moment I acquiesced to date my husband (after six years of brush-offs), I’ve known that I love him. That love shifts in forms, sometimes it’s romantic, sometimes it’s companionate, sometimes it’s lustful. Sometimes it’s all up on the surface and sometimes it’s further below. I’ve never doubted my love for him or, more importantly, his love for me.

I don’t come from a family with a lot of positive relationship role models. I never knew that you could fight with someone and actually remain calm and resolve an issue. I always expected my parents to divorce. Every fight I overheard could have been The One. The tenuousness of their relationship was the blueprint against which I would compare every other one I observed. I was especially intrigued by the relationships of the parents of all the children I babysat. I watched them interact like an anthropological experiment. I studied their actions, their speech patterns, their mannerisms with regard to each other. I remember being stunned one night when I noticed the Dad of one of my charges come up behind his wife, pat her on the bottom and say, “Hey, Fox!� It was so casual, so light-hearted, so endearing. I resolved to one day have that kind of relationship.

And I did. What I found in my husband was a friend above all else. He’s a wonderful and hilarious buddy to have around. He leaves practical jokes in every corner of the house. He draws ridiculous cartoons. He’s a Class-A ball-breaker. But he’s also a caring and thoughtful friend. Sometimes, very rarely, he’s a crappy friend. And on those infrequent occasions, we have the kind of relationship that makes it okay to call him on it.

I wouldn’t have thought that any of this was an adequate foundation for the trial that awaited us. Before the accident that almost killed my husband, we had a very quiet, lovely, seemingly average marriage. We hadn’t lit the world on fire with our love. We hadn’t made anyone whisper under their breath, “Oh, those two’ll be together forever.� We didn’t stand out.

But leaning against a wall in that ER, listening to the litany of injuries, I felt myself stand a little straighter. I could see, right inside that terrifying split-second, that great marriages are not made in these moments. Ours was already there. With this knowledge, I could handle everything that would come down the pike and help him do the same. This revelation helped me listen intently to every doctor, absorb every minute detail and advocate for him when necessary. Every sheet I signed as his next-of-kin made me more keenly aware of the awesome responsibility that lay in my hands. And how he wouldn’t have placed it in anyone else’s. I know him better than anyone on the planet and he me.

Before we knew the outcome of his various surgeries, I tried to imagine our lives if he were wheelchair-bound or needed a permanent colostomy. I got to a place where I was okay with these and the many other potential scenarios. I envisioned the difficult road ahead and decided I could manage it. I knew that wheelchair or no, my husband would want to live. We had a baby on the way and he’d want to be her Daddy. Even if he wouldn’t be able to run around with her, he’d be here for her. For us. As himself.

But, I was also told stories of men with similar injuries who wake up and don’t recognize their wives. This I could not manage. I couldn’t fathom caring for someone who wouldn’t have any kind of emotional connection to me. Someone who wouldn’t or couldn’t reciprocate my love. How does that work? Would our love just fade away?

The day my husband woke up was miraculous and devastating. The whole day he regarded me with the same casual surprise that he did every nurse, doctor and PA who came into his room. It was clear that he did not recognize me. He didn’t seem to have a grasp of any of it. The doctors said it was probably temporary. I left the hospital despondent and tried to imagine getting to know him from scratch. I wondered if his personality would emerge eventually and we could laugh again. It was not a good night.

I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to stick this out. I wish I had known then some of the people I know now. One woman I met online recently said, “You would have risen to the occasion, just as I did. You love him. It's what we do.�

When I went in the next morning I was assaulted by nurses telling me how ferociously he’d been asking for me all morning. When I came into the room it was as if he’d been wearing a stranger’s face and just now taken it off. I saw in his eyes that he was all there. He was everything he had been. There was my husband and my friend. And the only person I could imagine being with forever.

In my childhood checklist of a perfect mate, I never envisioned the man I married. The fantasies of a teenage girl have very little to do with grown-up reality. Of course he possesses some of the qualities I’d wanted, but he is also so much more. The love I feel for him is full of things I would never have thought to hope for. Even before his accident, I have been thankful everyday that my stubborn resistance to his charms was momentarily disabled. And though I wish he’d never had to endure his injuries, I am also grateful for that moment of clarity in the ER.

Now that are lives are calmer, it’s hard to stay inside that state of terrible grace. But that’s okay. We both know it’s there. And, of course, I’d much rather nag him to take off his shoes than keep in his breathing tube.

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The following entry was written by Karin of Chaotic Home

I fell in love with my husband after meeting him once. He was engaged, but that didn't last. Then he deployed, but we wrote letters to each other every day. We got engaged over a phone call while he was in Saudi Arabia and I was in Georgia. We had our FIRST KISS when he came home three months later. It was a relationship of open, honest sharing, very little physical contact. Probaby the best relationship I'd ever had. Can't "jump in the sack" with each other when you're separated by 5,000+ miles.

The wishy, washy, hot momma feelings of love eventually fade away. True love is when you still feel respect and devotion for each other when your matabolism drops, globs of fat appear on your hips, thighs and buttocks, and you're too tired to actually fight with one another. Then you have kids, fight, and are too tired to remember what you were fighting about in the first place. Then when one of you is sick, dripping green goop from your nose, crabby like there's no tomorrow, the other one finds a way to stay home to take care of the house, kids, AND keeps you tucked in bed to get better. That's true love.

You know you're in love when after 15 years you're still helping each other become better people. You've "grown up" together, relaxed into a wonderful, comfortable flow of life that makes it through some pretty hard times.

And when you take forever to pick out an outfit to wear to your husband's promotion and the best you can come up with is a gorgeous green sweater that still makes you look like a fat leprechaun, your loved one can still make you feel like a queen. Even when the three little Toad Princes dump their chicken wings, soda and chips on you. Somehow that doesn't bother you, it will be okay. You would have never imagined life turning out quite like this, but you have a special peace in your heart for these three boys, their dad, and the love they have for you, too.

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The following entry was written by Lauren of The Adnostic

One of my favorite sections in McSweeney's is the Songbook collection. Inspired by Nick Hornby some time ago, writers submit stories about specific songs or artists that had a great deal of significance at certain points in their lives. I think it's time I did a bastardized version of my own. For me, right now, it's River by Joni Mitchell.

It's coming on Christmas, they're cutting down trees

Putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace

I wish I had a river I could skate away on....

The other night, while driving down the 101, I saw a house with a decorated tree outside and a window all aglow with the words, "Feliz Navidad." Call me old fashioned, but I still consider September to be way too early for Christmas. Say it with me people - No justice, no peace, and no Christmas before Thanksgiving!

It doesn't snow here and it stays pretty green

Gonna make a lot of money then I'm going to quit this crazy scene

I wish I had a river I could skate away on....

I was walking around Sunset Junction once and I made brief eye contact with a woman walking the opposite direction. Was that Joni Mitchell?, I thought. It couldn't be. There is no way Joni would be walking unaccompanied around a Silverlake street fair in a simple shift dress and a Camelback. Fans would have bombarded her. But man, she really did look like Joni.

I know she still lives in Silverlake. I guess she never quite made it out of town like she had planned.

He tried hard to help me and put me at ease

He loved me so naughty it made me weak in my knees

I wish I had a river I could skate away on....

At one point while he and I were dating, he was in Vegas and I was dropping off a friend at his house after an evening of fine dining and mediocre music, we exchanged the sweetest series of text messages. Him telling me what a great time he was having, me making a few good-natured sarcastic remarks, and ending up telling each other how much we missed the other person. Momiji Man was there for the whole thing.

Me: This is weird. I've never dated a guy who was this openly smitten with me. I want to believe it, but I can't help thinking it's some kind of screwed up mind game.
Momiji: Just enjoy it, and don't fuck it up.
Me: Wow. You should give relationship advice professionally.

I'm so hard to handle, I'm selfish and I'm sad

Now I lost the best baby that I ever had

I wish I had a river I could skate away on....

Here's the thing with being a chronic relationship short termer - You can blame your inability to maintain a serious relationship on the fact that you've been dating a bunch of jerks, but when you finally do date someone nice and worthwhile and that doesn't last very long either you have to start wondering what the hell is wrong with you.
Especially when you notice a pattern of self-sabotage throughout the courtship.

I fucked up, he will not forgive me, and I don't blame him. I keep trying to rationalize it by saying that if I really mattered to him, then what I did would have been of little consequence, but then again why put up with someone else's BS when you don't have to?

Oh I wish I had a river so wide

Teach my feet to fly

I wish I had a river I could skate away on

'Cause I made my baby say goodbye....

Funny how rejection makes you want to get away from everything you know. You crave a vacation, a road trip, anything just to escape, because all those things you are trying to get away from are all the things that make you who you are and that was not good enough for someone you thought was wonderful and important. I cannot change who I am, but I am strong enough to adapt and adjust and make myself ready for the next great guy who has the audacity to sweep me off my feet.

I am a firm believer in the fact that therapy only works for people who really want to change. Right now there is a vast disconnect between the confident vocal woman I am when single and the insecure piece of spineless jell-o that I am when in a relationship. I want to reconcile that. I want to change, so I've decided to take advantage of one of my benefits from work and start going to therapy. I hope it helps before I ruin the next good thing that comes into my life.

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The following entry was written by Jenijen from NotCalm (dot com).

We were almost to his house when I finally got up my nerve and leaned over to kiss him. D and I were in the back of my mom's old black and tan pontiac sun bird, seatbeltless, driven by my older sister. It was dark outside; early evening in early autumn. I was telling myself things like, "Okay, when we make this turn, I'll do it. If the next song that comes on the radio is good, I'll do it. If he smiles at me, I'll do it." But, you know, I'd never kissed a boy before and I'd spent all spring and summer writing about him in my journal, (which really needs to be shredded, because I was one hell of a rainbow/hearts/butterfly/ Journey, Styx AND Spandau Ballet quoting thirteen year old), recording every time he did or didn't say "hi" to me. I was so scared, I still remember tiny details, like the fuzzy camel-colored carpet between our seats, and the funny shape of the back windows. He had braces and pegged jeans.

There were a couple of false starts. We'd round a corner and lean into each other and let our mouths get so close our noses were touching, but then we'd laugh or cough or just sit back. A new song began on the radio. It was this song; my secret signal from the universe to lean over and kiss him. (Plus, we were almost at his street.) So, I did it. And my sister was cracking up watching us in the rear view mirror, I am sure, since she was eighteen and he and I were thirteen.

Honestly, I don't remember anything after that. I guess we dropped him off at his house and he broke up with me not too long after, because I do remember the blonde girl I saw him cuddling with at a church dance around the holidays. She got to dance in the opening ceremonies at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. Which is totally why I never watch the stupid Olympics anymore.

Strangely enough, twenty something years later, I drive by that house when I take my kids to school. I don't usually think about him when I pass by, unless I see his dad out for a walk or his mother on the porch. But there was this one time, not too long ago, when I was going to get the boys from school and I had the girls with me. Sophie loves to change the radio station from her seat in the back with the little buttons on the panel by the window. (van designer obviously had no children!!) She stopped on a 'hits of the seventies and eighties' station, and just as we drove past his house, that song came on. And, of course, it made me remember that wonderful feeling right before I leaned over to kiss him; I don't know that it can even be described, since it is so very uncomfortable and desirable all at the same time. Maybe it's like finding out you won the lottery at the same time you discover you're coming down with the worst flu of your life. Only, not exactly.

I started thinking about how he has kids, and I have kids, and in a few years I am going to have to parent them through, well, through THAT. And while I like to think I can handle watching my kids turn into something like what I was at age thirteen (please, let them be more mature and less geeky, amen.), I know that phase is going to be the hardest for me as their mother. I'm going to be tempted to tell them things they can only learn by experience. Generally, BAD experience. I just want to protect them and see them happy. It's going to kill me to watch them crying because someone broke their heart. And the kids who break my kids' hearts had best be fast runners.

I was on the phone with my mom last week, and she said, "Oh, C died this morning." (C is D's father.) And I felt so sad for him. Sad in the way that you reserve for people you keep close to your heart. I have driven by the house five or six times since then. I haven't seen anyone outside, but I did see extra cars parked at the curb. I'm thinking that he is probably inside, all grown up and grieving and trying to help his mother and siblings.

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The following entry was written by Mary Tsao of Mom Writes.

As I sit here thinking about my entry for the Mommybloggers Valentine's Day Rumble, I keep coming back to the topic of love. Sure, I love my kids and I love my husband, but you know whom I love most of all? Me.

This post is about taking the time to tell yourself, "Hey, foxy lady, I love you!" I know it sounds corny; you can substitute "hot mama" for "foxy lady" if you'd like. But if you don't love you, nobody else will. And when you love yourself, you're a happier person. Everything else falls into place from there.

The radical notion I'm about to propose is that in honor of Valentine's Day, you take that foxy lady, that hot mama you
love--you!--and treat her to a weekend away. If you've got money to burn, book your getaway at a spa. If you're still paying off bills from Christmas, don't despair. Use these tips to turn any motel into a place where you can rejuvenate your mind, body, and spirit. Mom, you deserve a break.

Planning a Foxy Lady's Weekend Away