What is love?

Somebody asked me out of the blue the other day
what is love?’ and it reminded me of this story:
When I was a small girl I lived in a country town that was surrounded by cotton fields. In the summer it used to get so hot there it was sweltering. My mum met someone and decided to move to another town and so I didn’t have to change schools halfway through the year I was allowed to stay and live with my Nan until the school year finished. My Nan was so lovely and kind towards me over that time. We had lots of laughs and when I think of what is love, I think of her. She used to let me have sleep overs with my best friends and watch movies and stay up late and eat as many lollies as we wanted. On Saturday mornings we would go down the street and she would give me money for a chocolate milkshake and let me scratch the lottery tickets she bought. She let me play cricket in the evenings with the other kids until the sun went down and we used to sit together in the shade of her verandah and wave to people she knew walking past. Leading up to Xmas time I helped her decorate her house with tinsel and we’d walk around the streets in the warm air and look at all the lights.

These are all memories I have of love but they were not the particular one I thought of when I was asked ‘What is love?’ It was in the warmest week we had, the temperature was skyrocketing. I had to walk to school as Nan didn’t have a car. The walk home from school was so hot, when the mercury reached its peak. I used to get home to Nan’s house and race to the air conditioner and stand with my face in front of it with my eyes closed to cool down. It’s hard to describe how hot and dry the heat was. I knew she felt bad that I had to walk in the heat so I tried not to let it on too much. I was running late on the hottest morning of the week and as I set off to school my Nan said, “I have a surprise for you when you get home today!” I tried to think about what it could possibly be as I ran out, and I remembered how I had told Nan the night before about the time I had tried a mango and how it was so deliciously refreshing and cool and how much I wish we could eat them in this heat. She said she had never tried one but it sounded very exotic. I thought that might be the surprise but I couldn’t work out how Nan could get a mango. It was too hot for an old lady outside that day and I started to get a guilty conscience for mentioning it to her. I got so busy with my lessons though I forgot about it, but as I was walking home in the deadly heat with my back pack on I couldn’t help but start dreaming about eating a mango in the cool air conditioning. I walked in the door and Nan came rushing out and looked so lovingly at my sweaty, red hot face and said ‘here sweetheart, I got you a mango!’ I looked at the ugly looking, shrivelled, oval green fruit and then back at her eager, excited eyes and it was at the moment ‘what is love’ was answered for me. Even though I realised Nan had actually gotten mixed up and bought me an avocado rather than a mango I still don’t know how she managed to get that just for me that day. We had a good old laugh at the mix up and collapsed into giggles as she said “oh well, they both end in o’s”. We halved the avocado and sat companionably spooning it out, as I described to her what a mango actually looked like. So when I think of ‘What is love’ I think it’s in the little gestures like that.

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