My love for the child asleep in the crib, the child's need for me, for my vigilance, had made my life valuable in a way that even the most abundantly offered love, my parents', my brother's, even Tom's, had failed to do. Love was required of me now--to be given, not merely to be sought and returned.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the profound value of love that is selflessly given, particularly in the context of caring for a child.
Alice McDermott reflects on the transformative nature of love, particularly the unconditional love a parent feels for their child. This love demands vigilance and commitment, marking a significant shift from the love received from family and friends into a more responsibility-driven, nurturing form of love that imparts a deep sense of purpose and value to one's life.
In practice
In a speech about parenting, one might use this quote to illustrate the depth of love that comes with child-rearing.
We turned onto the last landing. Going out with this guy, I thought, would involve a lot of silly laughter, some wit--the buzz of his whispered wisecracks in my ear. But there would be as well his willingness to reveal, or more his inability to conceal, that he had been silently rehearsing my name as he climbed the stairs behind me. There would be his willingness to bestow upon me the power to reassure him. He would trust me with his happiness.
The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we're gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure.
Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.
Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.
I once asked a bird, how is it that you fly in this gravity of darkness? She responded, 'love lifts me.'
The garden of love is green without limit and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy. Love is beyond either condition: without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh.
There was something better in life than this rubbish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .
No man knows till he experiences it, what it is like to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the woman he loves.
Lovers communicate not inside sentences, but between them. Passion lurks within interstice. It is grouting rather than bricks.
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