This one goes to eleven

Eleven weeks, that is.  That's how old Ella-Anne became on Tuesday.  And as I browse back through the blog of three years ago to see what parallel experiences we had with Alex, I can only observe this:  We have been bestowed with two very easygoing infants.  If anything, Ella-Anne is even more low-key than Alex was at that age.  They're both beautiful little girls, they both slept through the night, and their fussy times were pretty well limited to an hour at night (Alex's was from six to seven p.m.; Ella-Anne's is usually from eight to nine or so).  No colic, general happiness -- can't ask for much more than that.

On another subject.  One of our friends (no names) posted this on Facebook earlier this week:

"A Mother is supposed to do everything with LOVE . . . but I am not sure if cleaning the dirty cooler on Friday night to bring the juice boxes to the soccer game can be done with love . . . how about changing a poopy diaper for the 5th time in a day?  Scrubbing the oodles of toothpaste out of the sink?  The definition of LOVE sure changes after you have children."

This made me think more than a little bit.  Poets and philosophers have been trying to define "love" for thousands of years, without any particular universal or agreed-upon success.  But I wonder if this doesn't really capture the essence of "love" -- the willingness to do (just about) anything for another person, especially when that other person can't do for themselves. 

Strangely enough, the first thing this made me think about was not my own daughters' poopy diapers -- though those do come to mind several times a day.  (Well, they don't exactly come "to mind" -- maybe "to butt."  But I digress.)  No, what this post made me think about was my own Mother and Father, and in particular the way my Dad cared for my Mother toward the end of her life.  As my Mother's brain tumors, the ones that would take her life seven months later, progressed, she lost the use of her legs.  When the weakness of her legs got beyond the point where she could use a walker to move about the house, and she was effectively confined to her bed, my father purchased a portable hospital toilet.  Despite the fact that he was approaching 80 at the time and had a biventricular pacemaker and defibrillator in his chest, he would pick up my Mother from her bed and place her on this portable toilet multiple times a day.  He told no one that he was doing this -- and particularly not me, because I was just astonished when I visited home in May 2003, after several months' absence, and saw this going on.  (To protect my Dad's health, and to ensure that Mom was cared for in the best way possible, we moved her to a nursing facility shortly thereafter, though my Dad would never have allowed that on his own motion.)

What I witnessed there, though, was about the purest expression of love that I can imagine. And as I think about that today, over six years later, it is a good reminder to me about what love is, and that I can always be a better Dad, and a better husband, than I am now. 

It's not the stuff of romance novels, but all of it -- changing diapers, scrubbing coolers, going to work every day, or silently caring for another -- it is love.