A Lover's Journal: April 2004

Posted on April 23, 2004 17:3 PM EST

My colleague's daughter loves me. No doubt about it.

Last night we had gone out for dinner. She sat across the table from me. I was not in the best of moods. She was not well either. She was ill and in a bit of pain. She was grumpy and whiny for a few minutes in the beginning. Until she noticed me sitting across the table and looking at her. We stared at each other quietly for sometime. And then little by little she started to smile. Her smile grew gradually... like the Sun rising exquisitely slowly. She tried to hold back on the smile, probably because part of her remembered that she was not feeling well and that she was in pain somewhere.

But she could not resist my appreciative smiling look and my presence. She just had to smile. I burst out laughing at her attempts to hold back on the smile and she flashed her smile brilliantly, like the Sun that has finally risen completely. For the rest of the evening, we had a happy, giggling, chattering three-year-old baby among us.

My dark moods were gone too. I was happy and contented, knowing that this three-year-old loves me. Simply, naively, innocently, unjudgingly, acceptingly loves me. Loves me enough that she forgets her illness and pain and smiles just because I am there in her presence.

And when it was time to leave, she would not leave without expressing her love in some tangible way. When she got into her father's car, she called me in, wanting to give me something. She rummaged around in the various boxes and found a coin. And insisted that I take it. I said no, I have my own money, you keep it. I said no, it is your father's money, you keep it. But she screamed and pleaded for me to take it. I did not. It was just a 50 paise coin. Why did I feel such a resistance to accepting that coin from a child who loved me, just because it was money? What asses we grown-ups are!

And the kid is concerned for my happiness too. She asks her mom where my "aunty" is. She means my wife. And when her mom says I don't have an aunty, she asks if I live alone. She wants to know why I live alone, why I have no aunty, does nobody love me? And occasionally when we meet for dinner, she will ask me with great sympathy in her voice and expression if I live alone. Then, she will ask her parents if they can all come to my home, just because she thinks I am going back to my lonely home.

I am so blessed to find such sweet love and concern in a strange city, so far away from home. Apart from my family and the Goddess, this baby is perhaps the only person in my life right now, who loves me with such uncomplicated and uninhibited openness of the heart. Truly, the Goddess chooses well when she brings girls and women into my life!

If only more people could love with such an open heart! Our external lives, relationships, bodies have to conform to so many rules of love. Why tie up the heart and the mind and the soul too? Why not just let them love as they will, at least on the inside? Why not just let go and let love?