I Love You More Than Anybody Can

I'll walk in the rain by your side

I'll cling to the warmth of your tiny hand

I'll do anything to help you understand

I'll love you more than anybody can...

One of my favorite childhood hobbies was flipping through my parents' collection of folk records, singing and dancing away the afternoon in our living room on Barkley Avenue. Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver, and Creedance Clearwater Revival always topped the playlist, but the album with the most play was, without question, Peter, Paul, and Mary. More specifically, For Bobby, a lullaby written by a mother to her child, was a song whose melody wrapped its comforting arms around me like a thick, warm blanket. It was a song my mother sang to me, in happy and sad times, and one I sing so often to my own children that even my three year old knows all the words by heart.

My very early childhood was a host of hazy, golden, backlit memories in which I knew for certain one very important thing: I was loved. While the circumstances of my childhood changed and my worldview was tarnished by the reality of ruptured families and broken dreams, I never questioned that I was loved and loved deeply by the person who mattered most. For that, I am thankful.

Now as a parent myself, I am all the more grateful for my mother's selfless, unwavering love for me. It's a love that was never stretched too thin as she assumed the role as a single parent to three young children; it's a love that saw me through to the other side of a significant teenage rebellion; it's a love that has imprinted itself on the hearts of her grandchildren, even though she lives on the other side of the country. And in the completeness of my mother's love for me, love becomes a reciprocal force; it is accepted and passed on, while imperfectly, to a new generation. That's a beautiful thing.

 Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Thanks to you, I know all the words by heart. 

and I love you more than anybody can...