Love wins.

A status I recently wrote on a FaceBook thread declared that I "loved" Brendan Coyle, the actor who is currently seen as Mr. Bates in Downton Abbey.

That got me thinking about the word love and how I throw it around, casually and flippantly.  I love chocolate and Starbucks.  I love this book, that movie.  I love those shoes, that scarf, those jeans.  But really, all that stuff I say I love can't love me back.  They are things, inanimate objects.

I need to be more careful how and when I use that word. Since I've been thinking about that, I catch myself deleting "love" and replacing it with "really enjoyed."  Or by saying relish, enchantment, delight, care for, fascinated with, think the world of, or any other synonyms which convey a great liking but stop short at "love."

Love should be reserved for my God, my husband, my children, my parents, my brother,  my extended family, and other people very special to me.  It is a word that describes actions within relationships.  To love means I am treating those around me with patience and kindness instead of arrogance and rudeness.  Love is not selfishness, irritable or resentful.  Love is sad when wrongdoing happens because it understands the consequences, unintended and intended, of the wrongdoing.  Love rejoices in the truth.  It is always hopeful and enduring, believing and bearing all things.  It never ends.

Brendan Coyle's time as Bates on Downton Abbey will end, just like Tom Selleck's did as Magnum PI.  These men will never even know of their adoring fan in the backwoods of northeastern North Carolina.  But my husband and my children will know me and my love for them, forever.

I have a friend whose car sports a sticker which simply states "Love wins."  I used to argue in my head with that sticker because, on the surface, I didn't believe it truly.  But as I pondered what it means to love, deeply, fully and with great abandonment, love does in fact win. So I need to make sure I am loving the right people the right way.

Always, and not just one day of the year.

Yes, Kathy, grown women DO read Twilight.

Twilight.  You know - Team Edward (vampire) or Team Jacob (werewolf).  The series of tween/teen novels written by Stephanie Meyer about a high school girl falling in love with a sparkly vampire, no evil Count Dracula that one.

Kathy Shaidle wrote an article at PJ Media trying to explain what's wrong with America, blaming it on suburban moms who read Twilight. (Good grief, what would she say if she knew I had seen ALL the movies? With my husband to boot?)

According to her: Trouble is: the ladies who need to read this article aren’t on the internet right now; they’re at a “spa,” trying to decide between the “Brazilian” and the “Californian.”  Well Dearie, the two are NOT mutually exclusive and some of us can do both.  Just not at the same time.  Waxing does not equal a decrease in IQ points; breastfeeding does <geesh, insert eye roll, doesn't everyone know THAT?>

She also writes: PJ Media’s female readers are presumably politically engaged, well-informed and — just a guess — not too skanky.  Reading escape fiction and getting waxed does not equal skank in my book.  And don't insult the skank by assuming she isn't politically engaged or well-informed.

Shaidle goes on to TRY to describe a typical suburban mom who uses a camera as a shield to keep her children at bay and shuttles them around from place to place and activity to activity so she doesn't have to actually deal with her offspring. At the end of a long day doing all that stuff, mom likes nothing more than to curl up with a good book, or maybe a favorite movie.  

I am not a typical suburban mom; living in the country and homeschooling have the tendency to remove one from that category.  But at the end of a long day of pressure canning combined with the reality of educating my child, I rather enjoy escaping into good book, whether that is Twilight or The Hunger Games or Outlander.  Shaidle seems to lump The Hunger Games in with drivel; it certainly is not that, especially in light of the potential for discussion it provides.  That suburban mom could actually use The Hunger Games trilogy as a means of making herself and her children politically engaged and well-informed.  

And then, for her denouement, she encourages us to read JANE AUSTEN (yes, I am yelling).  I love Jane Austen.  I've read her books, seen the movies, had endless discussions about both.  But ya know what, if Kaaathy wants us to be more educated, to rise above the drivel of such novels as Twilight, she should have told women to read ALL the books in The Well-Educated Mind.  That way, we could know the bloodsucking politicians have been around since before Herodutus; the silver bullet for the werewolf is shot from the revolver of timeless themes rooted deeply within humanity; and "real" women can be educated and shallow in turns without politically disengaging or lacking information on what's happening in the world.

Because, let's face it: even Jane Austen is romantic escapism, deeply rooted in the themes of her time, just written in very pretty, but sometimes convoluted, 18th Century British prose.  

One generation's Mr. Darcy is another's Edward.