That is Owen, sitting on the back of the couch in the library, looking outside. I found him sitting there today and I said, "What are you doing, baby?"
"I waiting for Boppy," he said. "When he comes, that where he park his car."

It's true. That is where Boppy parks his car but Boppy was at work and I told Owen that he wasn't coming for a long, long time and finally, he came down off the back of the couch and joined his brother and me again. And when he pooped on the potty, the first thing he said was, "I need to call Boppy and tell him."
And we did.

Owen loves his grandfather so much. He loves me too. I know he does. And his Aunt May and his Aunt Jessie and his Uncle Hank. He loves us all. I told him that Jessie was coming today and that she would be here with us tomorrow, all day long. He was pretty darn excited about that prospect.
"Jessie getting married," he said.
"I know. Who's she marrying?"
"Vergil. Jessie and Vergil are sweet."
He not only loves his aunts and his uncle, he loves Vergil too. And Sweet Uncle Matt as he calls May's fellow. Honestly, that's just what he started calling him one day. Sweet Uncle Matt.

The love. It knocks me out. It digs a place into my heart that has needed healing my entire life. I swear it does. And Gibson is beginning to understand it too. He holds his arms out to us, his extended family. And you should see how excited he is when his father or his mother come to pick him up. I put him on the phone today when his mama called and when he heard her voice, it was like the sun coming up, watching his baby boy face. I told Lily how big he'd smiled.
"I can raise some Mama's boys," she said.
And oh yes, she certainly can.
But more than that, she is raising babies who are so very much loved and who are able to love with complete abandon.
I think about this so often. How neither Owen or Gibson has ever spent so much as five minutes being taken care of by someone who wasn't kin to them, who didn't love them down to the bone. Who didn't think they weren't the best, the very best boys in the world. Not five minutes. If I don't have them or May or Boppy or Hank or Jessie, their other grandmother has them and of course she loves them to the heavens and back as well. I wonder what this is going to mean for them in the future, having had this beginning. Having felt for every second of their life that there was someone in charge who was there out of love. Are they going to take that for granted? I hope so. I hope they always take it for granted that there is someone standing behind them, no matter how old they are, who is there for the simple reason that they love them. That sort of complete love which doesn't hold grudges or resentments or have bars and hoops to jump. Just the simple fact of their being makes them worthy of being loved.

I think it is going to matter. I think it is going to make a difference.
I look back at my life and wonder how much time and energy I have spent trying to make myself lovable, worthy of love and affection. How probably a lot of that time and energy was a waste of time. Either people love you unconditionally for who you are or they don't and how I've yet to learn that.

Yet to accept it.

That's the thing.

I talked to my Lizzie on the phone this evening. She's coming on Saturday night to help with the shower on Sunday after playing at the Will McLean Festival way south of here at noon on Friday because for the second time, she's won first prize there for the best original Florida song. Do you know how many people vie for that prize? I don't either, but a lot. And this is the SECOND time she's won it. And she's going to do her set and then drive all the way up here to help me with this shower because she loves Jessie and is her fairy godmother and because...she loves me.

I write that and the tears spring to my eyes and I don't really believe it, even though I do.

That picture of Owen reminds me of a moment in my childhood which is etched deeply in my soul. My mother had taken me to the nursery of her church so that she could go and attend the Sunday service and perhaps she was singing in the choir. I'm not sure. But. I cried and cried for her and I remember distinctly how kind the ladies in the nursery were and how they tried to coax me out of my sadness with Play Dough and toys and nothing would work and that hour was endless and then all of the parents came to collect their children and I was the last one there and I looked out of the window set in the door and finally, at last, here came my mother. She was limping because she'd broken one of the heels of her shoes and that was as sad as anything to me. That limp, limp, limp down the hallway and I'm sure that my sadness sprang not just from that one hour but from all of the sadness in my childhood home, the uncertainty, the fear. But I was so glad to see her. My mother. She was coming back to get me.
Finally. And at last. Limping but coming all the same.

When I told Owen that his Boppy wasn't going to be coming any time soon, like I said, he was fine with that. He knows that eventually, he'll be able to play with his Boppy again. He knows that he's fine here and that his parents will come to get him and that he'll be more than fine at home. He knows, quite simply, that he is loved everywhere and that he is taken care of and that his brother is taken care of wherever they may be.

If I have accomplished nothing else in this lifetime, I have made some choices which led to that.
And if Owen waits for someone to come, it is with joyful anticipation in his heart and there is absolutely no reason for him to fear that they will never, ever come. He knows that eventually, they will.

Here's a video that I love because it shows Lis so beautifully. Listen to the last notes because they are angel notes. And she is singing about...love.

Which I swear, is what it's all about.

Love....Ms. Moon