June | 2016 | Figuring. Shit. Out.

I’ve been thinking about love in the last few days, itching and twitching with excitement as I awaited the arrival of a new and blessed human into the clan. She finally came, this great niece of mine with her mop of hair and splendid howling maw, and she’s perfect. She’s gorgeous, of course, but that’s not what I mean. I mean she’s perfect in the way that all babies are perfect, as an emblem and ambassador of all that we long for in this life.

She isn’t merely loved. She’s love embodied. I haven’t had a chance to meet her yet and hold her in my arms, but I already love her and know her as love. I already know that she’s a gift, not just to her parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts and great uncles and great aunts and cousins, but to the world. To everyone else. To all of us here, groping through the everyday with faith that it will lead us somewhere with light and meaning.

Love is a verb and an abstract noun. But it’s also a substance, a thing made tangible and real by living, touching and giving of one another — a thing that sparks to life in the arms of our beloved and grows with each new embrace. We rock our babies, and they become toddlers. We kiss our toddlers, and they become schoolchildren. We hug our schoolchildren, and they go on to high school, then college, then jobs, then marriage, then children and grandchildren of their own, making yet more love out of yet more love in an endless, fractal branching of fertility and hope.

My own three babies, no longer small, are the proof and stuff of love. So was my late husband, this new little girl’s Great Uncle Chris, who made our children with me. So was my late sister Lucy, whose death prompted us to have kids sooner than we’d planned. So are all we love who leave too soon, who cease to be present in this world but never cease to be real, because love never ceases to be real. How could it?

This is the lesson in every baby: that nothing, nothing, nothing is more real than love. Not time. Not loss and pain. Not life itself. That first holy moment cradling a child lasts forever. It is forever. People call parental love unconditional, but it’s more than love without condition; it’s love without end. All love is. All babies are, this one included. She’s love, and she’s loved. And all is right with the world.

Every now and then, when I’m desperate to hear the voice of someone who knows me and loves me enough to give me the shit I so desperately need, I call my brother Danny. And he swears at me.

He provided this service earlier this week. I was navel-gazing and perseverating in THE worst possible way, fretting over various Conversations with various People who said various Things expressing various forms of Dissatisfaction and passing various forms of Judgment on me that, okay, I shouldn’t have internalized, because I knew deep down that these same Things were fundamentally and unequivocally Wrong. But I’m fundamentally and unequivocally human, so I internalized every last Thing and filed it away for safekeeping. The other day, I retrieved those Things. I replayed them in my tired little brain, then shrugged into a hairshirt and started beating myself with a stick, preparing for A) A life of misery and loneliness; B) Byzantine sainthood; or C) Both, and doesn’t that sound like fun!

I was in the throes of such self-flagellation when it hit me: I’d better call Danny so he can tell me to shut the eff up. And I did. I called him. He answered, bless his soul. I gave him the low-down on the Things I had internalized, on my overwrought psyche and on my subsequent plan to remove myself to a cave in the desert of Osrhoene for a life of ascetic reflection and self-denial. It’ll be great! I’ll take a vow of silence and live on beetles!, I told him, or something along those lines. And Danny, interrupting me, said:

“NOW WAY! EFF YOU, AMES! NO! NO! NO! NO WAY! NO!”

Then he said it again.

“NO! NO! EFF YOU, AMY! NO WAY! NO WAY! NO! NO! NO! NO!”

And again.

“NO WAY! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! EFF YOU! NO!”

At this point, I was laughing so hard I could barely hear him, but he kept going.

“NO! NO! NO! NO WAY! NO! EFF YOU, AMY! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! EFF YOU! EFF YOU! NO! NO WAY!”

And so on. He kept yelling at me. I kept laughing. By the end of this loving tirade I was shedding tears of joy and relief, because my brother had said exactly what I needed to hear at the exact moment I needed to hear it. He then went on to say more things I needed to hear, compassionate things, insightful things, uplifting and affirming things, things so different from the Things I’d heard before and have had such a hard time forgetting. I thanked him for that, and for making me laugh.

What struck me, both in the midst of this conversation and in the days afterward, was just how necessary it is — for all of us, in this beautiful mess of a world — to have people in our lives who’ll yell at us when we most need it. We need people to shake us from our funks and give us shit. We need voices noisy enough to shout us down with love. I have those voices in my life, the voices of relatives and friends who’ll say what has to be said and say it with frankness and force. I know where to turn for what I need. The other day, I needed EFF YOUs and NO NO NO NO NOs, so I turned to Danny. He gave me the love I needed, and it was loud as hell. Thank you, brother.