Happy Valentine's Day: Love Hurts

We've all had that heartbreak moment when we've recalled the lyrics of the popular Nazareth cover of "Love Hurts."  "Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and marks."  As parents we get to experience love and pain in new dimensions.  

This will be my tenth year as a parent.  I remember people saying things like "your life is over," and "everything will change" when I was pregnant with my oldest.  I hated it when people said these things.  To me they were nearly as unwelcome as the comments about my growing girth, "Wow you're getting fat/big/large/huge."  Yes, I am big, yes this child is making me eat a pint of Haagen Dazs and several bacon sandwiches a day.  So what?  Kiss my expanding ass.

Aside from the fact that these comments are terribly cliche they are also terribly obvious.  Yes, everything does change.  Yes, your life as you know it is over, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Words like "busy" and "tired" take on whole new meanings, but the really tough part of parenting is not the 2 am feedings or micro managing a toddler.  Although these activities are certainly exhausting, it's the emotional burden of parenting that will give you the proverbial gray hair.  

I'm sure I'm borrowing this metaphor and it may be just as cliche as the well-meaning comments I abhorred, but having a child is truly like having your heart grow legs and walk around outside of you.  Loving my children is the most emotionally painful thing I've ever experienced because I have absolutely no control.  I have no choice in loving them, loving them utterly, completely, to distraction.  As much as I do to ensure their safety and well being, I can't keep them in the protective bubble I'd like to at times.  Life is risky and there's not really a damn thing I can do about it.  

When they get sick it's not the endless management of bodily fluids that gets to me (although this is not fun), it's the fear.  The fear that they might not make it.  The fear that this virus will be deadly overwhelms me.  Most of the time, if we are lucky, I think we all go about our day as though we'll continue to have good health and the blessings of enough to eat and clean water.  But when someone you love is suffering, all of your mental capacity becomes focused on one prayer/mantra:  "please-please-please-please-please let them be okay."  You beg until their temperature drops, they stop vomiting, or they get up and run around again and then you breathe the sigh-of-relief prayer "thank you!"  All is not well, however.  Things will never be the same. After all, "love hurts...love marks."