Things I Want My Daughter To Know #1: love

For this first post, on a series that I alluded to last week...okay, two weeks ago...I'm a bad blogger :commence with the slaps across the wrist, Sister Mary Clarence: ($1* to anyone who can tell me what movie that name is from!).

Focus, Alex, back to the reason for posting: what do you want to tell your daughter! Oh yeah, so I thought long and hard (yes, that is why it has taken me 2 weeks to post the first follow up to this series, I swear!), and I thought of one of the most memorable lessons my mom has taught me: Love.

Now I will go on at some point about how my mom taught me and my 2 younger brothers the importance of family love, parental love, and love for our community...but I distinctly remember my mom's first lesson on amorous love.

I was in 4th grade and was "dating" Scott Martin, who I found out in college (by a girl who I went to college with who went to high school with him) that he is gay-needless to say I know how to pick 'em. But Scott Martin was smart and funny in my 9 year old eyes, and we wrote frequent notes to each other back and forth throughout our time together. In one note my mom found in a pocket somewhere, Scott professed his love for me and evidently I had written back that I loved him too (on the same page-we were ecologically minded at a young age).

My mom was VERY UPSET. She told me that I shouldn't say I Love You to just anyone. Loving someone means something. She gave me this test to know whether I should say I love you to someone: Do you care about them as much as or MORE than your brothers. Now, she found my weak spot. I, being the oldest sister and mini-mom, loved my brothers like something crazy. I made up my mind then that I would only say I love you to my husband.

From then on, friends would casually say "I LOVE YOU" and I would casually deflect it. Even though it was not the same amorous love I didn't want my friends thinking that I loved them on the same level as my future husband. When I dated, I kept things casual (after hitting the 5 month mark, they usually fizzled by either time, distance (i was a fan of the long distance relationship), or lack of drama). I never got close to saying I love you. The few guys I came close to loving I never dated, they remained friends that I cared and still care a great deal about...almost like a brother.

While not saying I LOVE YOU did not keep me 100% innocent and pure...it kept a certain level of distance in my relationships. I am and was the type of girl that plays all or nothing. I'm not sure if I would express the severity of the love spectrum that my mom did, but I do think she gave me an invaluable lesson on what true love means at the most basic levels and how to tell it from lust or fancy or infatuation.

And yes, when I said I LOVE YOU for the first time, it was to my future husband. But, him being the love-happy-jump-the-gun type of guy he was, he said it very quickly in our relationship and I did not say it back immediately. He almost broke up with me (I found out later) because I waited so long to say it. But I said it and haven't stopped saying it with every breath of my body since.

Do you have any lessons of love? If you do and would like to post about what you want to teach your children about love (amorous, filial, paternal (some other Latin base phrase) or how you fell in love (first last or greatest), please link it up here (this is an informal linky...maybe I should formalize it with a graphic...what do you think?

*$1 of my love and devotion!