I Love You One by SJ Korzelius
“I love you,” Dad said.
“I love you, too,” I replied.
“I love you three.” And the game began.
“I love you four.”
“I love you more.”
Game. Set. Match.
Dad: 1. Kid: 0.
He always won. Every time we played this word game, all the way through my adulthood, he won. He always professed to love me more than I loved him. Which, I guess when you’re little, can feel reassuring. I knew how much I loved my dad (and my mom, grandparents, my teddy bear), but to know that he (they) loved me even more, well, that was a good feeling.
When my kids were younger I sometimes played this game with them and when my 21-year-old son recently texted “I love you” to me, I recalled my dad’s game and replied with “I love you more.”
And it got me thinking.
Since when do adults corner the market on love?
Granted, my son is an adult now, lives in another state and pays his own bills, but he is still my child. But how dare I presume that my love is superior or greater than his or anyone else’s? Who’s to say that my son’s capacity to love doesn’t run even deeper than my own?
I bet it does; he is one compassionate person.
When I was a teen in my first dating relationship, my father told me I had no idea what real love was. That I wouldn’t know what real love was until I was an adult. I distinctly remember sitting on my dark green carpet, looking up at him filling the doorway, making his proclamation. I also remember being miffed at him, thinking that I was mature. And pretty smart, too. Not as smart as my dad, maybe, but how could he possibly know my capability to love? Was there some meter? Some litmus-test number? Blue and you don’t know what love is; red you do?
Who knows, maybe he was a bit testy himself at the prospect of not being the number one man in my life anymore. Perhaps his reprimand – and he made it sound like a reprimand – was because he didn’t want me coming home pregnant.
Makes me wonder what he was up to when he was in high school.
I had other positive male role models in my life besides him, most notably my grandfathers. Grandpa P called me “Cleo” because, he said, I was just as beautiful as Cleopatra. I always had a special place at the table next to him and when his temper got the best of him (an unfortunate family heirloom), I was the only one who could be in his general vicinity, the only one he would accept affection from. Grandpa M was, well, he was nearly the whole world for me when I was little. Still to this day he’s one of the best humans I have ever known. We lived with him and Grandma before I was old enough for school while we built our own house on a piece of his property on the other side of the creek. His patience knew no bounds and he often let me take extra shots while playing lawn croquette, no matter how my parents protested the special treatment. I was his “Little One,” the only grandchild who shared his poached egg breakfasts and who followed him around in the gardens. He often admonished my older brother when he and the two boys from up the hill said I could play kickball with them. Not only did they insist upon all three of them against me, but no ball they kicked could be called foul. For me, yes. For them, no. Until my grandfather came outside and defended me.
Did my grandpa love me more than my brother? No. In fact, he had special nicknames and traditions with all his grandchildren. He simply insisted on fairness and equality. What better way to demonstrate love than to demand others are treated fairly and with dignity?
Does saying you love someone more than they love you make you superior? More worthy of the love you profess to have? Better suited to spot and fix the injustices of the world?
No. It doesn’t.
Love is not meant to be a competition.
When I reread the “I love you more” text I sent my son, I realized that even though I was trying to convey the depth of my feelings for him, I was at the same time, minimalizing his feelings for me.
Yes, I wanted him to know that this love I have for him is huge and incredible and sometimes overwhelming, but there’s nothing saying that he doesn’t feel a similar hugeness.
Sometimes I tell my husband I love him more than he loves me and he always counters with, “No, I love you more.” As if this love we share needs a score keeper and isn’t electrifying and awesome and death-defying for both of us.
To quote a Dharma and Greg episode, “When we compete, we don’t complete.”
We look to give our love away to those who will complete us, to those who will help us become who we were created to be. And in return we complete them and encourage them to be their best.
Love is an unbreakable, infinite circle.
I would give my life for any of my children or for anyone I love. Who’s to say they wouldn’t do the same? If I needed a transplant, I’m pretty confident my kids would be the first in line to donate. If something were terribly wrong with me, I have no doubts they would drive or fly to me as quickly as humanly possible.
What more could a person want?
Certainly not to be loved to the moon and back. The distance between the earth and the moon is measurable and finite. Love can’t be measured. Love never ends. Once you travel to the moon and then back, it’s over. Done. Nothing left. A finite distance. A finite measurement. The expression and the reality it tries to convey has a limit.
Love is meant to be limitless.
Buzz Lightyear got it right: To infinity and beyond!
Measureless.
Limitless.
Never ending.
To infinity and beyond with loving others, not just those close to us or in our families, but to all earthlings. Let’s not make it a competition. Let’s just make it happen.
“This was something I just had to verbalize once the lightbulb went on over my head after I texted my son, but never knew where to find it a home.”
SJ Korzelius is a writer, photographer, and outdoor enthusiast. You can find her at the keyboard, behind the pages of a book, in the garden, on a bike, or playing ball. Visit her on Twitter @SharonKorzelius and Instagram @sharonkorzwrites