i suppose anyone who was not raised by their natural parents can likely relate to my emotional reaction to this phrase. my aunt and uncle loved me. they loved me enough to take me into their home and raise me from the time i was 11-years-old. they never did adopt me, opting instead to keep me officially a ward of the court. I think this status provided them a modest monthly income.
the "i love yous," my aunt and uncle shared with me tended to be of the written variety, scrawled in greeting cards on my birthday. the dearth of "i love yous," in my childhood made my uncle keith sound weird when he would visit and tell me he loved me virtually every time he saw me. i can still remember those "i love yous." i remember my uncle keith offering them up and me thinking it was odd and that he seemed uncomfortable in delivering them but in retrospect, i see it was me who was uncomfortable in receiving them.
today my brother paged me out of the blue and said he loved me. it's not the craziest thing ever for him to do this though i don't think he's done it before. he has told me he loves me though, even recently. he has been out of prison for about eight months and i think he has a fresh lens on life and he has perhaps been trying to speak his mind and let his loved ones know he appreciates them. still, this "i love you," was unexpected and it caught me like a left hook.
i love my brother. i loved him when we were reunited at 6 and 11, when i took to kissing him goodnight but was chided by my uncle not to do that as it was not manly. i loved him when we were kids playing matchstick in the pool out back. i loved him in the ocean when he surfed past me as i lay on my boogie board, wishing i had his talent for hanging ten. i loved him when he left and went to denver, even though i felt like i did not know him in those days. i loved him when he was locked up. i sent him books and wrote him letters, reported my thoughts on the sports world and waxed poetic.
we celebrated our birthdays together this past year for the first time in a number of years and at the end of the night, (or the beginning of the morning,) eating pistachios on a balcony and swigging the last of many beers, he revealed some insecurity. i spoke my mind in saying he had a unique opportunity in so much as he has the chance to live two lives. Yes, he is the man who made some mistakes and spent some eight years locked up, neck deep in the prison gang culture. unlike most of his peers in those days, he is out and has chosen a completely different environment for himself. that is laudable in and of itself.
i think the "i love you," stems from that evening. it comes from all that he is going through but in addition to saying he loved me, tommy said something about how i was always there for him and i never wore a mask. (of course, i do wear masks but the one that represents my brother's best friend feels completely honest and authentic.)
i do not begrudge my aunt and uncle for withholding their "i love yous." i would sooner be angry if they had said it from a sense of obligation. i had a chip on my shoulder growing up in their house. my sister was loved obviously and i could not begrudge her that, either. she deserved it and i wanted her to have it. the relationship she had with her mother was intense like only a mother and her child can have.
i appreciated her honesty, too, in not faking it with me. i nurtured the chip on my shoulder and was angry at the world for the fact i had no mother, (or rather, my mother was incarcerated for the length of my youth and died from a drug overdose when i was barely a man.) but i withheld, too. at christmas time as gifts were spread over the breadth of the living room, i opened mine one by one and feigned shock and ecstasy.
in my first year in my aunt and uncle's home my shock and ecstasy were real. i went from receiving one present per christmas to this year in which i received an air hockey table and a host of lesser presents. it was like winning the lottery and my amazement was real and palpable. in years that followed i could never duplicate that emotion, which had clearly impressed my aunt and uncle. i think it was like a drug to them. i think they felt pretty great at being able to affect a child in such a way. in later years i sensed their disappointment at my inability to duplicate that first christmas response.
in reality, i could have done it. acting is easy. but i would not have been true to myself which is the golden rule of my life and so, no. i could not act as impressed as i initially was. and i could not act like i meant "i love you" to them when i had no real idea what "i love you" meant in those days. i was able to lie on occasion. embarking on band camp or church camp or some such thing when i would be away for several days we often acted out this real family saga in which we would exchange tepid "i love yous," like alligators pushing up on front legs as if to stand and walk but merely exposing stumpy haunches, barely creating way for a snail's passage beneath. such grandiloquence.
in offering these "i love yous," i traded on my survival skills. i never felt good about socking someone in a fight either but if it was me or him, i socked. "i love yous," were the punches that kept me in my family and away from the unknown foster parents who would make my life so much more hellish and angry.
a girl at work said i love you to me recently and i was quietly flabbergasted. i knew she only meant well and i recognized it came from her 21-ness and that's all nice. the very next day i heard her say it to someone else and i could not help but think how nice it must be for her that she can throw that phrase around. when she said it to me, my response was to say, "right back atcha." that's it. that's the best i can do.
it is interesting to me too, that this girl says the phrase full-on. she intones every part of it: "i llluvvv you." when i have used the phrase under duress i have tended to shorten it, turn it into "love ya," or "i love ya." in this way i feel truer to myself while also doling out the phrase that pays."i love you" is just too intimate. it means too much to me and it has a certain power that makes it like a gun i can't know if it's loaded. i just don't mess with it.
at home with my little girl and my son, i consciously say i love you often, (i think.) i want to be sure they hear it and from me. i want them to be able to use the word appropriately, easy enough but not without sensing the gravity of it. and i want to be sure i can say it to them. "i love you" means i continue to get healthier as i grow older. and i do love my two little darlings, like nobody's business. i love them so much i am afraid of the pain i could conceivably know.
i love my brother too. he's been here with me through it all. i love my dad who was my uncle. i love my wife. i love my sister and my friends and the rest of my family and my extended family and yeah, in a way, i love that 21-year-old girl from work who helped illustrate this lesson for me.
here: check this out. i can say it to you right now and i don't even know who you are.
"love!"
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