More love

You don't need me to tell you that it would take more than one blogpost to cover the question of love. It has taken me this long, though, to recover from the shock of my temerity in discussing it at all a post or two ago. I did suspect at the time that I would be drawn in to discussing it some more. This time, there is the magnet of lost love. Is there any quality of love, through circumstance or choice, (see below if you are new to 75goingon40), which can be counted on as rock solid? It's possible that the love of one's children could be expected to overcome no- matter -what. Equally, the love for one's children.But, big but, don't we all know of situations which can , nevertheless, be categorised as 'never-darken-my-door-again'? A fictional one comes handily to mind. Do you remember "Fiddler on the Roof"? Briefly, this was the story of a very poor Jewish family of Father, Mother and five daughters living in Russia at the time of the pograms. The story was not the most subtly developed, but none the less potent for that. There was a progression, seen through the eyes of the obdurate, traditional Father, from his ultimate acceptance of his oldest daughter's right to chose her own husband to the marriage of a younger one to a Christian. Between, there was a middle daughter's alliance with a radical whom she followed to Siberia. Faced with each abomination, he first disowned and then came to reconciliation with them. Non-specific experience tells me that it is less likely the other way around. It seems to me that children are less inclined to accept, or even need, the rock solidarity of the parents' love, anyway, on the surface. One doesn't know the effect on their unconscious, that is, as P.G. Wodehouse, puts it, if they had one. I can think of instances, however, where a parent has 'sinned' by all rational measures of that crime, and is still loved and related to by his/her young. Indeed, the greater the 'sin' against love, the stronger the pull to have it back.

Maybe, there's the rub. Is it that we forgive and accommodate sins against love because of our need to find a rock solid one, at all costs to avoid its loss? I think, often, about the ramifications of divorce, for instance. Is it possible that the love, whatever its quality, that brought to people together in the first place, simply ceases to exist after divorce? Where does it go? In to the ether, down to the other place, is it transformed in to hate or indifference? Does it linger, in dreams, in cupboards, in the stuff we consign to Oxfam? Someone I know and love loathes her ex with a passion that can be almost scary. But, she dreams, with desolation, that she has lost her wedding ring. Is it the 'ghost of love lost' rather than 'hate found' that is hiding in her inner world? Death is different. It may be that there is not such an 'if only' possibility in the loss of love through death. Death clears our relationships of acrimony: divorce of tenderness. In the past, I have been careless with love, thinking it rock solid when it turned out not to be. There is a sort of see-saw in it: the 'no-matter-what- I-do I- can't-lose - it' against the 'no-matter-what-it-costs I'll -keep- it'. This morning it cost three different kinds of cat food to get it. I know, I know: no boundaries, no shame, no leave-her-to-it-and-if-she's-hungry etc etc. But rock solid it certainly is; for the moment, anyway. Bora da