she keeps her love away

...I'm learning how to love from watching you."

A friend of mine said that to me last night ~ or something along those lines. Rendered me absolutely speechless. Seriously, how do you respond to something like that?

I'm still trying to figure out completely what she meant by that. I mean, she DOES know how to love. She and her husband are about as cute as they can be and clearly love each other. He's such a sweetheart, incidentally. He's my new "big brother" and it's fun having one after all these years.

I know she meant it as a compliment. And it is. It just made me think...

How do we learn to love? I know I got lucky. I did sort of win the "good family" lottery in what I have. My parents have been married for almost 41 years. I've got a younger sister who I love now ~ it took a while for us to get there, but we made it. We've never really had any major problems. So I don't really know how else to exist.

Maybe that's part of what my friend meant... I know our backgrounds are really different. REALLY different. But somehow that doesn't stand in our way of being friends. It's like it doesn't really matter...we work through it. I think she's learned a lot from her husband too...I don't know him as well, but I get the impression my background is closer to his.

Or maybe it's how I've handled a potentially, well not potentially, a very sticky situation with someone else. The way she put it a few weeks ago when things were really difficult was "You don't have to apologize. We're all learning how to be in this crazy mixed-up family we have here."

I don't know... But it made me think in a good way. I'll probably come back to it at some point when my brain and my heart have worked through it a little more.

I know I love my friends and they love me. And sometimes that's all that really matters in the end.