here to love.

He tells me he loves me and I tell him I love him more. He laughs.

I'm standing on the faded basketball court I painted on my driveway, in a neighborhood skirting the city, blocking his shots, making him laugh. 

Everything else falls away. 

It has taken me years of work to get here. 

She asks me if I know how to crochet. I'm sitting on my bed with her, spools of yarn and crochet hooks. Loop it around, hook it and pull it through. I watch her determined mind outpace any doubt she might have. 

It has taken me years of work to get here. 

She asks me to watch her dive. I'm standing on the edge of an indoor pool, it's muggy, a chlorinated sauna at the end of my workday. My favorite part is seeing her smile when she comes out of the water. I am proud to be the face she sees smiling back at her.

It has taken me years of work to get here.

Why are we here? I ask my oldest every morning when I drop her off before school. 

We are here to love, I say. 

I know mom, she says. 

We do funny things in the name of love. We get defensive. We try to control. We think we know what is best for someone else. We enable bad behavior. And we say that is love. 
I've said that is love. My defensiveness is activated by my fear. My attempt to control is activated by my doubt. My thinking closes my heart. My enabling grows my resentments. 

But to love is always available. I just have to show up. I am. I am there, I'm not doing anything other than being there.

I block the shot, he laughs, she loops yarn around the hook and pulls it through, a bit of progress is made toward her goal, she emerges from the water, we smile. 

It has taken me years of work to get here, where everything else falls away.