More Than One Kind of Love

So, today is Valentine’s Day. You might think because of my recent marriage break up that I would be joining those Valentine’s Day haters. For some people, days like these simply exist to make it even more obvious they are alone. It is the same with celebration days like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year. In order to feel less alone I spent Christmas 2012 in a completely different way to how I had before to avoid the ‘empty chair syndrome’ of carrying on a tradition without the most important person present. I went out and ate with friends and created new traditions that would enable me to move forward. Maybe we should do the same with Valentine’s Day.

At the risk of plagiarising Joan Armatrading there is more than one kind of love. Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love, but who says that has to be restricted to romantic love? I hear people, usually tight people, moaning about the commercialisation of the day and it has become a gaudy mix of supermarket red roses and glitter, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Maybe we should use Valentine’s Day to celebrate the love we do have in our lives, instead of the love we don’t. Yes, it is wonderful to have a soul mate, that one person we click with. I have been ecstatically happy in relationships, but I have also been sad and lonely in them too. However, I do have love in my life that is steady and unchanging. I have the love of my family, shown in the wonderful party we had last weekend for my mum’s 60^th birthday. This was a celebration of how much we love her and appreciate all she has done for us over the years. The love we have for her was shown in the weeks of planning, the gathering of all the pretty china, the napkins with frog princes on that I knew she would love and the faltering attempt at public speaking in front of 50 people when the last thing I enjoy doing is speaking in public. Every cup and dish that was washed and every cake that was made was done with love.

This was not just a celebration of family though, it showed us all the love of our friends. The friends that shared their crockery and made a cake. The friends that stood for five hours making frog prince cupcakes. The friends that spent four hours driving just to be there for the weekend. I have immense love for my friends and they feel the same way about me, no matter what mistakes I have made. Their love is shown in the meals they cook me, and the dog sitting they do so I can work at college. It shows in the time I had to sleep on the sofa when my marriage broke up, or when I needed someone to sit up with me at three in the morning because I was having a panic attack at the thought of my new single life. It shows every time they take me on holiday with them like a big gooseberry and in the hours spent on the phone helping me find my confidence again.

Every week, voluntarily, I spend two hours making tea and listening to people’s problems at the local social drop-in centre. There are people with mental health problems, lonely people, people who are struggling with stress or depression. I care about these people and turn out every Wednesday to spend time with them, make them tea and listen. Even if I feel washed out, tired or physically incapable I still turn up. Isn’t that a kind of love?

I had a friend called Kathryn, who did not always want me to see her when she was at her most ill, but most weeks I would send her a postcard or a short letter, letting her know I was still there and sometimes getting nothing in return for months. That is a kind of love.

I have contact with an autistic man who I used to be a keyworker for. He has no help from a social worker anymore but struggles with everyday tasks like reading, answering mail, managing finances and coping with bullying. If he has a problem, he calls me and I go round. I read and reply to his mail. I help him use the internet and get what he needs for a safe tenancy. There is no title for what I do and yet I do it. At Christmas he surprised me with a wonderful carving of Miss Piggy. Surely this is a kind of love.

Recently I went to see the film The Impossible and it was a great emotional experience but I found I didn’t cry in the same places as everyone else. Yes, it was emotional when the family finally found each other but the moments that made me weep were moments of extraordinary humanity. When the mother and son put themselves at risk to help a little boy who was a complete stranger it made me cry. When they climbed a tree to safety and the  mother was in agony and exhausted and that same little boy soothingly stroked her arm it made me cry. When the local villagers found her and dragged her to safety in their village and the women bathed her and covered her with new clean clothes it made me cry. All of these are examples of love we never celebrate. Why is our definition of love so narrow?

Before I met my ex-husband I was a widow – I know, it’s very complicated. At his funeral I had my friend Jo read the poem ‘Atlas’ by U.A.Fanthorpe which had the opening line ‘there is a kind of love who’s name is maintenance’. It then lists all the day to day things that people do for one another because they care, because they love. It isn’t always about red roses and not being able to think straight. Those times are precious and beautiful of course, but I think we often forget the support and love we do have because we’re pursuing a romantic ideal.

So, don’t spend today lamenting what you don’t have. Celebrate all the different kinds of love you do have in your life.

ATLAS by U.A. Fanthorpe

There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.