Love, Care and bell hooks

Where can love flourish?

Colby was five, almost six-years-old before we hired anyone to help us take care of her. Miss Heather still works with Colby a few precious hours a week. I think back often to a moment from the very first night she stayed to help with dinner. 

Usually, Colby sat at the head of the table so that both Craig and I could be on either side helping her eat, feeding her, wiping her chin, offering sips of water.  Coral sat beside me on my side of the table.

The first night with help, Miss Heather sat in my seat, and I sat beside Craig, across from Coral. Coral and I smiled at each other from this new vantage. She was just three-years-old. She was young enough to be openly hungry for my attention, attention she often did not get, or had to wait and wait for.

Now, I could just look at her all meal if I wanted. She seemed to physically relax as she registered my attention. 

We raised our glasses to, “Cheers!” which always made Colby smile. Delighting in the word, the festivity, the movement, I don’t know. But when she was little and let us know it delighted her, we made it a part of every dinner.

I looked at Colby from this new angle, not even two feet away, and felt a wave of joy and happiness rush through my entire body. 

Many years later, I read bell hooks, “All About Love: New Visions,” and she distinguishes care from love. Care is an aspect, possibly, of love, but they are not synonyms. Just because we are giving care does not mean we are loving. And in fact, a great need for care can mean that there is not space for love. 

When I read this distinction I remembered the moment at the table. Miss Heather had stepped into my seat, literally into the care role I usually filled. The wash of joy and happiness, I could identify now, was love. 

In that two feet of distance between Colby and my care work, love had space - like oxygen to a fire - to come into the relational moment. 

I knew at the time that I felt much more than relaxation or relief from the work of feeding Colby. Years later bell hooks helped me understand the depth and importance of that moment.

Now, I understand love itself as the endangered resource in our undervaluation of care. When families and caregivers are subsumed by care labor, it is not just sleep and resources that are lost. Love is lost. 

The time, space, and opportunity to love, that is possibly our most basic need and right.

We deserve that, all of us, on all sides of the care cycle. When we talk about care, let’s raise the bar to also consider how and where we have the space and dignity to feel and name our love for each other. 

For us to look up from the IEP report, step back from changing a diaper and actually see our child, partner, parent, there has to be another person to step into the labor of care. And for that to happen, a culture and society committed to love and care: something like a remembering, something like a revolution.