There are so many parts to our uncertain memory. There is the smell of your child. The feeling of a warm parental hug. The sound of your child’s heartbeat and breath as they nap. You are besotted with their moments, their thoughts, their words. Having a child makes you feel both weaker and stronger because you have this incredible responsibility to them and, yet, the real knowledge that any harm to them would come back to you in multiples.
Romantic love is something quite different. You don’t pick your children; they are extraordinary gifts given to you regardless of whether you deserve them. Romantic relationships can be like selecting the Havalon knife that will go into your heart. You pick your partner and you go in knowing it will end painfully. It is natural to be afraid of that kind of love; the love that takes a pound of flesh.
Parental love is supposed to be an unending, multi-generational, cycle. You love fully, without fear or compromise. You hope that when you pass, your child will have the love of their children to sustain them. You put your entire heart into them. You don’t consider that you will lose them. You can’t conceive of not having grandchildren because your child won't ever get to grow up, or regret their prom date, or fall in love. The pain is too inconceivable. Oh, how what Constance has lost haunts me.
Day 153 is at https://www.wantmybabyback.com/blog/day-153.