Your Love Is a Remarkable Place to Live

Your love is a remarkable place to live.

It is without judgment and filled with enduring support, encouragement, and faith. You stand steadfast against the most turbulent currents, the ones that threaten to wash everything and everyone I care about away. You have been my lighthouse through so very many storms, a place where I can crumble without judgment. You are another home and refuge, a reminder that though we are all very much alone, I will never be so as long as we are here together.

Emerging from the global pandemic, from the Trump presidency, and from so much turmoil, I have never needed the comfort and warmth of you more. You remind me that life can be too serious and it is also our duty to laugh when we can; we are obligated to laugh at ourselves, at the silliness of humanity, and to look the darkness directly in the eye, wink, and laugh despite the magnitude of its weight. You remind me that our family has always and will always handle the hard things this way because the weight of despair is so much more difficult when we can not make it something crudely jovial.

You remind me to love fiercely and protectively, to accept my shortcomings as a parent, and to remain open to a sometimes-cruel world. You grant me the permission to be brave because of how you have chosen to live and the ferocity with which you digest, analyze, and think about new ideas, people, and the planet.

There is a grace in the stories you tell about our people, in their hardships and shortcomings. There is a pride in having so little, working so hard, and living and dying for our family. I see that allegiance (though it is more than simple obligation) in the gentleness with which you treat every phone call or desperate message or question. You are devoted to me in the same way that I am devoted to you because it is in our blood and our legacy to hold one another carefully and delicately and sometimes ferociously. 

You are my safe place, the soft place to land, and the listening ear I shall need without end. You are home. Your love is a remarkable place to live.