How Do I Love Thee?

Since this post, a lot has happened.

Baby Sister is gone! She's in the MTC. The night before she left, I stayed over at my parents' house. So did Little Sister and Mr. Little Sister. Baby Sister said that she wanted all of us in the house with her so that if she woke up in the middle of the night, she could come round and look at us.

I don't know if she actually did that, but she did "tuck us in" the night before. She stopped by everyone before we went to sleep. I'm not sure what she said to everyone else, but she told me to tell you that she said words so wise and deep that they cannot be repeated.

When we dropped her off, we took our new minivan. (Our Mormon Assault Vehicle aka Moby Dick aka the 14-passenger van perished in the fall. I won't embarrass family members by saying how the van perished, but I will say that my fear of sneezing while driving has been completely justified. Why did we even have a 14-person van when there are only eight of us, you might wonder? Because minivans generally stop at seven seats, and if you have too many people for a minivan you have to buy a humongous monster van instead. Both Shutterbug and Best Friend Boy's families, of eight and nine people respectively, also had 14-person vans.) Unlike our Mormon Assault Vehicle, the minivan had a back window that I could actually see out of. I took advantage of this innovation by watching Baby Sister as long as I could as we drove away.

I miss her, but not as much as one might think. First, she's off doing something we both believe in, and that's good, so how can I be sad about it? Secondly, almost immediately after she left, I ran off to go camping with my ward. I haven't even had much time to miss her.

While on this camping trip, I thought a lot about love. I thought about all the different ways a body can love someone and the meaning of those ways. For example, on this camping trip we were accompanied by the counselor's wife whom I referenced in this post about the ward book club. (Update: she's now the bishop's wife! Because the counselor became the bishop...not because she changed husbands...I just wanted to clarify that.) That book club meeting was pretty frustrating for me. I went running afterward, and then following my run, I went back to her house, late at night and unannounced, and told her why I was frustrated. And she just rolled with it. She was so nice to me even though I'd just broken all 75,847 rules of normal social engagement. And then we became friends, which seems unbelievable, just because I feel like a real actual adult mother who isn't my real actual adult mother should be put off by my quirks and personality, not embrace them!

She was so kind to me this entire campout even though I was in a terrible mood, and I was reminded of the power of friendship love. Which is a very important love! Yet it's very different from the love I feel for Baby Sister and my other younger siblings, which in turn is different from the love I feel for Older Sister, which is again different from the love I feel for my parents. All those loves are different from the kind of affection I feel for my roommates. Those loves are different from the people I often see whom I have a vague sort of fondness for but don't know well enough to love. And all of those are again different from the loves I've felt for the boys I've cared for as friends and beyond. And all of that is again different from the love I feel for God and Christ.

All of these thoughts were so much more eloquent and deep inside my head, but now I'm essentially just vomiting all my thoughts and have lost track of the purpose. I don't know what I mean by this. I don't know. It all made so much more sense when I was camping in the mountains and staring at the stars.