Are We There Yet?: First and Forever Valentines

That real love, the genuine article that settles in after the initial earthquake of being in love calms and settles? That love (you know it) which overlooks grumpy mornings, bad manners, belches, and boredom -- that love that persists and prods and supports, that grows downward with roots so it can spread upward with shade for everyone around it? Mirrors of the greatest and first Love, it's all blessing and curse, pleasure and pain, sorrow, joy, and glory. It's built into us to crave this love with all it's yin and yang -- and the great challenge of our lives to recognize it when we're hip-dip in it. This beautiful, wonderful, difficult love.

Brothers, Gabe and (photobombing) Dominic,

with big brother, Paul's, daughter, Lily

We first learn to put up with it (if we are blessed) at home, from our parents from the very beginning, who push and pull and stretch and and pat us into the people we should be. In families that cooperate with God's grace, we wallow in Mom and Dad love, even when we sometimes we resist it or misunderstand it. Then there's that other first love, love in perhaps its most potent and least appreciated form (at least until we've grown up quite a lot), the love we suffer at the hands of our siblings.

It's a sticky, pitchy, testy kind of thing, sibling love. No one knows us better than our brothers and sisters, and consequently, no one annoys us more, puts up with us more, or loves us more. Or longer. Birth to death. In spite of everything. Even when we go through droughts when we barely make connections with one another. The love still fills the corners and floods over, across the generations.

One of Dan's and my greatest (somewhat) unexpected pleasures these last few years has been watching our children's love for one another spring up in their adulthood -- and then spread to their siblings' spouses and children, and then from cousins to cousins, aunts and uncles, back and forth, all around. Everyone's doused, but it's been a slow steady flooding and the water's fine; no one seems to notice they're swimming in it. Love is a wonderful thing to take for granted, when you've been blessed that way, when you've accepted it from its Source and let it flow .

But don't take it for granted. Our first school of love is our childhood home. Our first Valentines are our brothers and sisters.

Left: Aunt Cathy and Uncle Fr. Philip with Michelle'syoungest daughter, Claudia

Right: Paul with Michelle's Claudia

Cousins! Paul's girls, Evelyn and Lillian lovin' on Michelle's middle daughter, Ella

Left: Auntie Anna with Shelly's Claudia

Right: Uncle "Bill" and Uncle Gabe with Michelle's Daria and Ella

Here's looking at you,, kid: Auntie Michelle and Paul's Gavin

Aunt Sr. Antonia with Ella, Daria and Evie

Uncle Gabe monkeying around with nieces, Daria and Evie

Four generations of Davis men: Great Grandpa, Dan Sr; Grandpa (Dandad), Dan Jr; Dad, Paul; son, Gavin

The music that threads through everything.

Uncle Fr. Philip with Claudia.

(Mind the gaps. Courtesy of Blogger's screwy picture insertion program, these photos are spaced pretty indiscriminately. I declare, I did try to fix it.. Argh)