Life is like a bowl of cherries.......

A Father's Love...

We were at the cottage this weekend in a rather unusual configuration. My boys were with their Dad for a special getaway and we just had Morgan's two children. Although we managed to jam pack a million activities into the mere 48 hours that we had, I did find some time to sit and think quietly. There is no better place on earth to think then the cottage on a beautiful July weekend.

Often we talk about a Mother's love and how that love is stronger than anything else in the world. Rarely do we speak of a Father's love...a deep, normally unrecognized emotion that I saw through different eyes this weekend. Whilst in the throws of a huge custody battle for his two children, I have not given enough time to notice that a Father's love is never recognized near enough. I saw things that made me love him even more...made me respect him more and made me realize that perhaps we get so caught up in the 'facts' of life, that we forget about the bond of love. You may or may not know the emotion that comes with holding your newborn baby for the first time...it is the most overwhelmingly amazing feeling that I have ever known. Mothers somehow get all the praise for that. Little do people see that men feel that as well. A Father holds his new baby and holds back those emotions while the Mother and the Grandmother reel with emotion....he just holds that child and falls in love quietly. We talked on the weekend about this very thing. I asked Morgan 'did you cry when you held Michelle and Mathew for the very first time?'...he responded 'not on the outside'. It made me think, and I asked him what he felt. He told me that he fell in love with both of his children the moment he knew that their Mother was pregnant. The moment they were born, he said that he had this overwhelming feeling of complete love. Morgan is a very honest man. He is rational and has great control of his emotions, but in that moment that I asked him, his eyes lit up and I could see that they were a bit glossed over when he spoke of his children. He then explained to me that he could express himself better with me than anyone else he had ever known. I felt very proud of myself when he told me that. Has it taken me 42 years to understand that my partner reacts to my reactions? Wow.....it is true. The more you open up to a person, the more that they share with you, the more that they trust you. (lightbulb) Somewhere in the last 3 years or so, I have begun to figure out the dynamics of relationships.

So on our weekend, I was very observant and what I noticed is that we don't give enough credit to men. We as woman tend to think that 'we carried them, we birthed them, we changed them, we washed them etc'. What we fail to see is 'they' worked while we did this! They came home from an ugly day and then we pressed these children into their arms and they carried on. A Father's love is very different from a Mothers. Men show their emotion in different ways. Sometimes it's teaching them how to hit a home run, or fix their bike or play fight. I watched as Morgan spent the weekend with them. There was no outside interference from my boys who vie for his attention as a Father figure. There were very subtle things as when he sat in the chairs at dusk with Michelle and they held hands as the sun went down. The way he rocked in the hammock with a bowl of cherries with Mathew in the late afternoon. I really watched and I was amazed as he divied up his time to give them each a piece of himself throughout the weekend. It is exactly was children want...just a small piece of our time. I feel more in love with this man...he didn't do anything different than he normally does.....it was me that changed the way that I thought!

Amazing things happen at the cottage...