Experiencing everyday love, everywhere

What words would you choose to define love? Which im-

In the month of February, we lean into romantic love—towards red roses and dark chocolate and poetic greeting cards. Towards and dinner out. Towards love that fits a happily-ever-after ending. But love is so much more than a romanticized version of Valentine’s Day. Love is a complicated emotion. Love is about caring. Love is about kindness.

Love is about selflessness. Love is about listening. Love is about connecting. Love is about embracing one another in words and actions which encourage and uplift.

Love exists in the ever y day of life. In the small things like the weekly Sunday brunches my husband of 40 years cooks for the two of us. In the hugs and refrigerator artwork of my two young grandchildren. In supportive texts from caring family and friends. There’s so much love to be experienced. And given.

I obser ve that love, too, when I’m out and about. Sometimes in words, like those on a doorstep frog-themed plaque in Waterville. Love is in the air. Love is in art, too. In a Northfield Union of Youth mural of an astronaut kneeling before a trio of flowers against a backdrop night sky.

There’s something lovingly tender in that scene. There’s tenderness, too, in a couple dancing to the bluegrass music of Steam Machine inside a machine shed at the Rice County Steam & Gas Engine Show, rural Dundas.

Love dances into our days when we allow it to do so, when we welcome it. I’ve witnessed such welcome in a lone white duck mingling in a flock along river’s edge at Riverside Lions Park in Northfield. I’ve seen love also in generational connections. With my own grandchildren, love comes in time together, in not caring if the preschooler overloads a frosted homemade carrot cupcake with too much hot pink sugar.

Love brings sweetness into our lives. Yet, love can feel sometimes elusive. But, in the end, if we open our hearts and minds to love, it will find us. 