The Gift of Loving

A friend has asked me to re-post a piece I wrote in 2004, in celebration of Valentines Day. Here it is.

I’ve always known that the opportunity to love is a gift, that loving unconditionally is the biggest perk of parenthood.  I also know that it is easily obscured by work and worry, by accumulated disappointments and assaults on our sense of goodness.  I’m seeing that gift these days unadorned—stark in its power and beauty.

Some of you may remember Chino, the young man in Nicaragua who claimed my son as a brother and me, by extension, sight unseen, as his mother.  I knew enough to take that claim seriously, and when I met him he was not hard to love.  I knew little about his home life—only that it was not happy.  Since our common language was my limited Spanish, we couldn’t speak in detail.  Intention, body language and tone of voice were as important as words.  I would sit outside in the early mornings watching the world go by, he would come over from down the street and I would welcome him to my side.

As I sit here thousands of miles away, remembering those times, I think of how simple and profound a welcome can be—an open smile, open heart, open arms.  I hadn’t realized how starved a life can be for such a welcome.  I hadn’t thought that I was giving a gift.

At the airport, as I was leaving Nicaragua, my attention was mostly for my first born.  He was lonely, weighed down by responsibilities there, needing places to let down and complain.  I did my best to invite Chino to that role, to be a resource for my loved one.  His mind was on other things.  He asked, rather wistfully, “Vas a regalarme?”, literally, “Are you going to gift me?”  I was a little taken aback.  I’m not much into presents and I had nothing there to give.  When I asked if he wanted anything in particular he mentioned a nose stud, something unavailable in Nicaragua.  So my first act as his mother back home was to go the teen rebel part of town, find a body piercing store and spend good money for strange adornment.  The alternative—not gifting him—seemed worse.  I sent a loving postcard, included his gift in a letter to my son, and wondered what else I could do.  Though I didn’t forget, my life quickly filled back up with all the responsibilities and relationships of home.

Finally a letter came.  With my poor Spanish and his poor handwriting and spelling, I wasn’t sure I understood.  But I was afraid I did.  He was not happy.  He had been drinking, doing bad things.  He wondered if his life was worth living.  I was the only one he could tell.  All of a sudden this situation was transformed, from a sweet cross-cultural claim of connection to the real thing.  This young man needed a mother now, seriously, for real—and he had chosen me.

I got help confirming my fears of what his letter said, and started wording Spanish phrases in my mind.  How could I use that blunt instrument—at a distance—in this time of exquisitely fragile human need?  It helped enormously that he sent an e-mail soon after, both reassuring me that he was doing a little better, and offering a more direct way to be in touch.

The only way I knew how to compensate for all the inadequacies of the situation was to offer love without limit.  I loved him more than anything in the world, and with all my heart.  When he thought about drinking, could he think instead of drinking in my love?  I stayed up late that night, forming my sentences, trying to forge our connection and my love into something that could work for him.

He was in my mind constantly the next day and the day after.  At breaks in a busy work week I thought of other things I might say.  I invited him to rewrite history with me, to have me there in his memory, every morning of his unloved childhood and every evening.  I used the dictionary, started sentences over when I ran into verb construction I couldn’t handle, prayed that my best would be good enough.

He wrote back, full of love for his mama.  Miraculously, something of what I intended had gotten through.  I wrote again, profligate in my love, saying things I would never say to my birth children, where a look or a touch would do, and anything more would be an embarrassment to us both. This narrow window of contact required me to offer as big a love as I knew how.  Perhaps it was just as well that I couldn’t be subtle in Spanish, and that in its unfamiliarity I could try out a new, more extravagant persona.

We have been exchanging professions of undying love all summer.  He has stopped drinking.  I feel like I’m living in the middle of a miracle.  Everything else is stripped away to reveal the simple and stark truth--that my love matters.