“People say I love you all the time—when they say, ‘take an umbrella, it’s raining,’ or ‘hurry back,’ or even ‘watch out, you’ll break your neck.’ There are hundreds of ways of wording it—you just have to listen for it, my dear.”
John Patrick, The Curious Savage
One of my kids (I’m not going to say which one, and I’m going to use “they” as the pronoun to keep it vague) has only told me that they love me two times. If you told me 3 years ago that I would have a kid who had only told me that they loved me two times, I wouldn’t have said it was possible, nor would I have believed that I would be okay with it. However, here we are. This kid has been in my life for close to three years. This kid is as much my child as the two who lived under my literal heart for 9 months. And yet this kid does not… ever… tell me that they love me. And yet… I’m ok. We are ok. Better than ok, actually. We are happy and mom and child and we love each other.
Honestly, I’m not sure if it’s trauma, if it’s adoption, if it’s obstinance, if it’s personality, or if it’s just the way this kid thinks things should be. I assumed at first that it was just going to take time. So from June to November, even as their other two siblings offered “I love you’s” like candy, I waited patiently for this one to feel comfortable. I even told myself that I was glad it was taking time, that it would mean more because I would know that they offered it out of true love instead of just because they felt like it was expected. In November, five months after coming home, I heard those words for the first time. And boy was I right that it was like an incredible gift, finally getting to hear them out of their mouth. But it didn’t “break the ice”, so to speak, and open the door for a wave of “I love you’s”. It was just that once, and another time a month or so later, and that was it. In over two years, I haven’t heard this kid tell me that they love me.
The other day, I had helped them with some things related to writing. The next day, this kid of mine said, “I think I am going to marry a teacher. They have really good retirement (HUH???) and they can help our kids so much with things.”
And you know what? That sounded an awful lot to me like, “I love you, Mom.”