The Framework For Love

感觉说的很有道理

The Framework for Love

It was an autumn night in my native Nova Scotia. A light rain was falling, making tapping sounds on the tin roof and the smell of mould filled the old lodge we were vacationing in for the weekend. A shiver in the air inspired a fire on the Franklin stove. We were all sipping hot chocolate and then my father went over to the upright piano, pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and began picking out a tune with one finger.

He was not much of a pianist, but he knew the love of song and family. My mother put down her sewing and joined him on the bench and then my brother drifted to the piano as well. Finally, a poor singer and so usually a violinist instead, I added my voice for a line or two. My father, ever considerate, said, “See, you can sing, darling. That was good.”

I have often remembered how warm, happy and loved I felt growing up. It took me years, though, to learn that the love in our family didn’t just happen. In fact, love never just happens—not even to people who seem as naturally loving as my mother and father. But, I would hedge to bet, there is a framework you must live within to let this gift that has no rivals mature.

First, love needs time. Perhaps people can recognize in a moment the possibility for love, and make grand declarations such as “I love you” within weeks of having met, but this love is comparable to the beginning of a long road up a mountain with many ups and downs. Mature love is like a living organism. It parallels the life of an oak tree, growing slowly from a seed in the mud to a slender trunk with barely any leaves and finally into its sheltering glory. We cannot manipulate or speed up the amount of years it needs to grow, but must instead, with wit and patience, appreciate one another’s differences and share one another’s joys and pains over time. So it is sad when divorces are caused by small provocations, when parents and children give up on one another, when friendships fall apart at the first injury, when we give up on love.

Too often we say “farewell” to someone we have loved without due thought and end up paying an emotional toll that is quite costly. I once knew a father and son who, saddled with their respective troubles in life, had drawn so far apart over the years that they found little to say to each other. And, without each other, their lives had become hollow. The son, just out of college, had planned to spend the summer traveling in an old yellow lorry on the two-lane highways that connected the country together before freeways. One day, when he was nearly ready to leave, he spotted his father approaching on a busy street and was struck by a singular loneliness in that long familiar face. He invited him to stop for a beer. Then on impulse, he said, “Dad, come along. Let’s spend a summer together.”

At great risk to the family business, the father, a furniture salesman, went along with his son. Together they camped, climbed mountains, sat by the sea and explored city streets and sleepy villages. “I learned more about being a father in the last two months than in all my son’s 21 years,” the father told me shortly after their trip. Everyone’s life should have room for loves worth risking sizable pieces of time we think we can’t spare.

We should not mislead ourselves into thinking that the ones we love must be like us. The key is to recognize and appreciate our differences. Those differences provide the mystery and wonder of human relationships.

Love needs another, harder-to-find quality as well, the ability to let go.

In the early years of my marriage, I had faulty notions that my husband should want to be with me all the time. On our first visit to his family’s house, I discovered that the men did things together and the women did the same. My father-in-law stole my place next to my husband in the front seat of the car, and the two of them often went out together, leaving me with the women.

I complained and made my husband miserable, caught as he was between the people he loved. My mother-in-law said wisely, “Being with his father is one part of his life; being with you is another. Be happy about both of them.”

I learned that love is like an elastic band that must stretch apart before it pulls you back close to one another. It is a coming tide whose waters retreat a little after a single wave, but the next one is closer to your heart than the one before.

Finally, love needs words to make it real. Without words, quarrels can’t be resolved and we lose the power to share the meaning of our lives. The important thing is to acknowledge and express our feelings. In this way, we can truly send the spirits of those we love as well as our own soaring upwards.

Love is not a single act, but a lifetime adventure in which we are always learning, discovering, growing. It is neither destroyed by a single failure nor won by a single kiss. It can only be achieved through patience and understanding.