It is love.

Love is riding bikes to the grocery store in the dark while shouting comebacks and laughing in the warm summer air. Headlights and headlamps illuminated the route we'd ridden hundreds of times together. I had a crush on him, one that I finally admitted in my black flip flops while stopped at the corner of Kirkwood and Iowa St., blinking out a mosquito in my eye lashes. I loved him, I loved the dark summer night, I loved my black bike, and I loved opening up and being honest about the way I felt. 

It was love and was scary and it was perfect.

Love is pulling up to the house after Johnson died. The house I felt trapped in during the last months of our marriage. The house where his new wife and son live. We sat on the floor in the living room which was completely familiar and so very different.

I had painted this room.

I picked out those curtains.

The area rug was hers.

Johnson was gone.

We remembered our dog. We laughed about what a goon he was. We cried at his sudden loss. We had shared so much laughter. We had shed so many tears. And here we were again, together, laughing and crying at a loss, at a dog, at a love, that was uniquely ours. 

It was love and it was heart-wrenchingly raw and it was perfect.

Love is telling my mother, with a face fatigued from crying, the horrible news. The light shined into her kitchen through the sheer curtains anyway, and kids rode by in the street anyway, shouting at each other on their bikes. The news was so fresh and I was so horrible. She hugged me. She tucked my hair behind my ear. And she proceeded to tell me how very human, and therefore how very divine, I was. She told me she was proud of me. How could she possibly be proud of me? At a moment like this? The thought of her unconditional support when I felt so unworthy made the tears spill over all over again. Her annoying dog dropped his ball in my lap. She put a plate of kale in front of me and handed me a tissue. Everything was going to be okay.

It is love and it is grace and it is perfect.