❤️

We had a few friends over yesterday for the first time in two years. Bit overwhelming. But the story is this: At one point, I’m talking with a friend whose relationship with her mother may have reached a breaking point. And another friend in the same conversation lost her mother when she was a child. So I observed that the three of us are on a continuum, right? L’s mom is gone. She’s always wanted her back but has always known that’s simply not possible. S’s mom is here, but she is herself impossible; she has never been the mom S needed her to be and that is never going to change. I feel like I’m in between those things: My mom is here, but she’s not the same as she was before her stroke, and I want that mom back. (The point was that S’s mom-situation is just as powerless as mine and L’s.) And when I observed this I teared up a little —

— at which point, from a whole different conversation on the other side of the room, Himself said “Wait a minute, why is my wife crying?”

❤️

(“We’re talking about moms,” someone said, and he understood, but I have been feeling the comfort since then of that most offhand unintentional demonstration that—not that I doubted this—he does in fact love me.)