Ah, love. The four letter word that evokes that special combination of fear and excitement in nearly all human beings. Love has been immortalized through the use of cute sayings, guilt, and longing…but what is this “love?” When do we first really feel its splendor and hellacious grip. Can we really define love, or can its meaning be as varied as the greeting card isle during February?

I was sure I was in love as a high school. I loved the idea of a car, I loved French fries, and I was confident I loved my boyfriend…I cringe at my misguided understanding of love now. However, we all experience it and grow from those first stages of love. When I was nineteen I met my first real love. We had a whirlwind romance, married, and found ourselves expecting a bundle of joy all in the span of a year and a half. Life was perfect, couldn’t be any better…no really it was. I was basking in the glow of real, walk through fire love. Then the morning of May 21st, 2004 came along. I was in labor…our family was about to begin…I was petrified, excited, nauseated, and forever indebted to the creator of the epidural. My pregnancy had been immensely difficult, but it didn’t matter…everything was going to come to fruition right here, right now. This was the best moment of my life.

I was wrong. The next few minutes were a horrible blur of doctors, nurses, yelling, scalpels, paddles, tears, and prayers. Our son…the best surprise I had ever received…was unresponsive. His little blue body was whisked away and hidden from my view. The doctor tried to distract my husband by showing him various organs and parts of me very visible from the emergency C-section. It would be twenty-seven long hours until I got to see my baby boy again.

Between pregnancy complications, surgery complications, and the doctor’s fear that I would be unable to handle my child’s unstable condition, I was kept away. Family was allowed to see his little red head, I got to see him through a LCD display on the back of a camera…I thought I was in love.

When I was finally wheeled in to see him- now known as the loudest baby in the nursery- I knew what love was. In that magical moment when his tiny bluish fingers grabbed mine, I knew what love was. The unwavering take a bullet, lie down and die, negotiate with the heavens love that can only come with experience and responsibility. You see, until you are solely responsible for a human life and all that comes with it, you cannot know what love is. Before this moment, love was a lacey notion found in engagement ring commercials. I loved my husband, but I loved him even more now. I loved my child when I heard his heartbeat, but I could not imagine a world without either of them at this moment. I was sure my heart could grow no bigger and I would never be able to love two people any more than I did at that one moment in time. That would be the pinnacle of my life. This would be the peak of my emotional growth. I was done. I did not need to know any more, my life was in that incubator and standing beside me.

Yeah, I was wrong again. I found over the next week we were in the hospital that my love grew every day. Even during the sleepless moments I was frustrated, tired, and in love. As we went home I was petrified. I even asked the nurse if they knew they were sending home a treasure with two people who did not know anything about children…especially how to care for one. Every night time feeding, every milestone I checked off, every smile and giggle I fell more and more deeply in love. I was fascinated by the fact that not only did I love my son more each day; I loved my husband and our union more each day.

When he was four, our son was diagnosed as developmental delayed. He was a paradigm of the special services world. He had the vocabulary of a nine year old, the cognition of a ten year old, but motor skills of a two year old. We would later find out he has Asperger’s. I loved him more. Through the 6 miscarriages we would experience over the five years since that scary day in May my husband and I grew closer and stronger. We were truly in love…not that we weren’t before, but we grew in love more with every obstacle that jumped in our way.

Our daughter was born unexpectedly early on March 17, 2009. She was also blue. Our love grew. My fears about not being able to love another child as much as the first were immediately allayed. When she needed special formula because she couldn’t eat anything else, including breast milk, I loved her more. In turn, I loved the other two members of our strange family more too. The two miscarriages since her birth have only strengthened the bond.

You see, love isn’t a feeling. Love isn’t a notion. Love- true kick you in the gut love- is a living pulsating being that lies dormant in all of us. It takes adversity and responsibility to awaken the beast. True love is not always warm and fuzzy. True love is heart breaking-ly hard. Love makes you do things you never dreamed possible or even sane. Love keeps you up at night with worry and excitement. Love grows with every problem that you are faced with. Love is a rush hour freeway with complicated exits, on ramps and speed traps. Love is not explainable.

There is no one definition of love. Love is different for each person that experiences it. Love is not wrong, love is not right…love simply is. Love grows. There is no one moment that you can say, “Ah yes, I am in love!” There are simply moments that make us aware of its power, its unexpected nature, and endless potential. Understanding the meaning of love means listening to that first time the passion that lives in all of us is awakened. The first moment one decides I want to live. Love is understandably misunderstood.