Last night I asked the kids if they have felt the aching pain of love.  They've had crushes but I haven't noticed anyone hurting.  I haven't even noticed much pining or drooping or even vacant staring.  This is curious to me because by the time I was in my tweens, I had experienced the misery and horror of love.  And I know full well I don't know everything there is to know about the inner life of my children.  So I asked.   They say no, no searing horrible pain.  (Yet, the hag of misery whispered to me.)   Then Henry offered a curious observation.  Maybe it was so painful for you, Mom, because you were in school every day.

Wow.  There's a thought.  No one can argue the primacy of hormones in young love.  However, what if half the drama and power comes not from longing for your one true love. So much as a sublimated longing to be free ?  Or a longing for something, anything, lovely and real and meaningful to distract from the marching hollow drone of life in school?  Or, what if the protection homeschoolers enjoy from excessive peer pressure, social inanity, and bullying also corrects the lens of love?   Surely and thankfully, Love is and is felt.  But what if you aren't so ground by it, and can see it in a slightly more reasonable perspective, if you aren't alone with it in what basically amounts to prison?  Huh.

Riley said, rather morosely, that she's been alive over a decade and never received a Valentine from anyone outside our family.   Actually that's not true.  But I know what she means.  She means Cupid hasn't slapped her upside the heart with any juicy romantical construction papered confections.   I told her Valentines Day is mostly a myth.  Its something that mostly happens between married people and in families.  What she is thinking of, a great feast of love happening today with all the kids in school, isn't happening.  Possibly some cheap slips of preprinted paper are floating around.  But we aren't talking about anything real or deep.  We are talking about the shallowest possible face of love.  And all good love is good.  But I told her: you honestly aren't missing much.

All of which is fairly cheerful to me, actually.  Valentines should be for true lovers, the deep end of the pool, the dark magical forest, the bed of coals, the reddest Goddess kissed lips.  We're talking about Mom and Dad kind of love, fat baby kind of love, puppy kisses and new born baby goats, the kind of love that bonds.  Its way better than the folded print out they are trying to sell my daughter.  Its real Love, my dearest Loves.  And that is some good news on a happy bright morning sometime just before spring.