Feb. 14, 2005 - 20:00 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Logarithmic

When I was a little boy my love for Mom was an infinite presence in my life. I loved Dad too, but Mom was the one !

As I grew older I began to understand love a bit and felt the tremors of what I thought was love for classmates. Of course I loved my cousins, but like my Dad the love was not quite the same as for Mom.

Going on through school there was a teacher or two that I began to love because I could see and feel that they really cared about me and my welfare. They worked so hard trying to help me.

I guess that at the beginning I was in love with love. Later in Elementary school puppy love turned into raging tormenting hormone driven love (spelled lust), yet in high school there was a girl I loved. Thank God it was not to be . . . . she loved the new car her Mom bought her, more than me.

As time passed and I worked a job it amazed me just how much Dad had learned since I was a little boy and struggled through the "I know everything," stage. And my love for Dad grew, and as well my bond of love for my cousins strengthened also. My mind began to accept that love was truly a many splendored thing as the song went, that all love was not sexual, and that a person's heart had room to love many different people, at the same time.

Marrying Heather was my post-graduate education in love. I was so fortunate as her brothers, sisters and other relatives took me in as if I were related by blood, and they are peacable people.

It was Heather and I together against the world, fighting to establish ourselves as people, loving each other more and more as time went on. Then the miracle of birth happened to us. And love swelled to a crescendo when this little live mite, a tube of flesh with a loud noise at one end and a complete lack of responsibility at the other (wish I could give credit to the originator of those words,) but each second, minute, hour, and so on our love for him grew increasingly.

There was room in my heart for him, Heather and family, to love. Our little family increased, and my love for them all increased more than the number of new members. Each day brought its thrills over new events in their lives. Son was four years older than the next child, a girl, and soon became the big brother to her, without being put through any process of parental training. With him it was more or less automatic. Things like that illustrated the thing that always had dug at me. I needed a brother or sister to love and watch after, but it was not to be.

It seems impossible but as our kids grew, my love for them also grew. As they aged and became thinking and communicating beings it was like watching fruit mature on a tree, beauty a-building.

And all along Heather and I worked to make things alright for the kids, help where we could, back them when they needed it and rejoiced to see them learn and react as we wished they would.Life for us was not perfect, we had our troubles as did our kids, yet through trying times love was there, sometimes stronger than before and after the trouble was over the love never decreased.

So, when I was at the beginning St. Valentine spelled romance with a capital R and then some. Dreams and ambitions "romantic" held their spell on me, I was in love with love.

But maturity and experience showed me the infinite variety of loves and truly the amount of room in my heart for the love of others is boundless. There are so many folks I meet on the net who are people I love much as I do family. Some are not weaned yet, some are older than I, but I love them all. Some are cyber sisters, bothers, aunts, and others, whether they realize it or not, are of my family too. Every gain of theirs is a occasion for my jubilation, every hurt and ill is also mine to worry about.

Also there are those young innocents in other lands who suffer cruelty, oppression -- their parents who risk death when they try to help their children -- any person or persons who try to help in any way regardless of the danger they face doing it. They too, I feel are relatives of mine, relatives I wish it would be possible for me to help in some way. but love them, I do.

In my soul love swells magnificently and it seems that love's magnification is Logarithmic . . . . . . . .

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