For Mom

I love you.

Those were the years of encouragement, when Mom pushed a lock of hair behind my ears and said, "You are beautiful. I love you."

She was forever kind, like moms shoudl be. Somehow she knew it was not her duty to perfect me, that perfection would take God's grace and time, and that even then, it would never occur. If it had she would have pushed my hair behind my ears in precisely...perfectly...the same way and said, "I love you" all the same.

I wonder for the people who have never had that incessant over and over again mom bugging squeezing tapping, but never nagging "I love you," said so much that a child never has to think otherwise.

I've had that.

And now seeing Mom's oldest child raise a child--kisses kissses kisses, "she's cute, right? or is it just me? hugging nursing playing--I think mothering must be a love that doesn't take away. It only snowballs.

Maybe that's what love ought to be for everyone, something that grows because it doesn't assume, but it does take action and it spreads to more people than just one and moves through every tendril of every hair of every person who has been told "I love you."