Love and roses

The strange thing about love is that although we spend most of our lives searching for it and desiring it and longing for it, no one can really define it or explain it or understand it.
And it has so many different forms, love.
There is the kind that sweeps you off your feet and sends your world spinning into  disarray.
There is the kind that grows slowly from the heart until it has wrapped itself around you like a warm blanket.
There is the kind that consumes you until you can think of nothing else and life has no other meaning.
There is the kind that hurts  and the kind that makes you laugh for joy.
There is the kind that anchors you and the kind that makes you fly.
There is the kind that makes you feel vulnerable and the kind that makes you feel strong. 
And then there is the unconditional kind that you take for granted:
the kind a parent gives to their child.
And that's the kind that makes us who we are.
That " no-strings-attached-devoted-love," that gives us the courage to take our first steps, say our first words, make our first mistakes,  knowing that someone will always be there to catch us if we fall.
It's the kind of love that comes with no expectations, the kind of love that is so unassuming you almost forget it's there.
 But if you don't have it, the world is a frightening, complicated, meaningless place.
 You don't dare try anything because there is no one to catch you if you fall.
Or you try everything because there's no one to care what you do.
It's not just that love completes you but that it supports you and gives your life meaning.
It is love that holds our fragile world together.

When my mum was ill last week, Ninesh, my husband, bought her some roses.
They were bright and beautiful, bringing warmth and colour to the whitewashed walls and polished floors. of the hospital wards.
But you're not allowed to have flowers in hospitals anymore.  They bring germs and allergies and the scent of hope.
So we took them back to her house and put them on the oval table just like she asked.
Like us, they were waiting for her to come home.
A reminder that no-stringss-attached-devoted-love goes both ways, that for now it is our turn to catch her if she falls.
They kept blooming, the roses, their colours almost glowing against the greyness of these rainy days.
They were still blooming when mum came home.
I hope she knew what they were meant to say.
That in the end, whatever form it takes,  perhaps that's what love is: a vase of constantly blooming roses that fills the world with hope and colour and dreams.