It feels like Spring, and I’m thinking about love.

One thing I like about yoga is that there’s lots of talk about the human condition. It’s a little philosophy chat during your workout. Years ago a yoga teacher said “if you didn’t get your chin to your legs, it’s no big deal. If you did get it there….. it’s no big deal.” I was startled and immediately smitten with this aspect of yoga: it’s about being present, not being perfect.

Around Valentine’s day my current (awesome) yoga teacher David was talking about physical open-heartedness (posture, and attitude) and about “falling” in love, “standing” in love with someone you’ve known a long time, and all the other relationships you can have to love. It was interesting—it immediately seemed true, but I’m not sure I’d ever pictured it that way. Being in a wonderful partnership with an incredible guy, “standing” in, and for, love made intuitive sense to me. I’m not sure this is something we talk about enough in our culture.

So, over the past months I’ve realized that I’m feeling more and more love for our children-to-be. Sometimes it’s disconcerting. Love is an intense feeling, and the lack of a clear object can confuse me. A lot! Is this anxiety or excitement? Am I getting misty-eyed in the toy aisle of Target because I’m completely losing it? Could I possibly be feeling more and more love for someone I don’t know yet?

Of course our biology is built for love—our species continues because when things go right, children naturally elicit our caring and nurturing. Like the cats and dogs who secretly run the world, little humans innately know what to do so we adore them even as they puke on our couch or wake us up in the middle of the night.

From this viewpoint, of course we’ll love the kids that come to us, whoever they are. It’s what caregivers (hopefully, usually, mostly) do. And of course love’s something we have in ourselves; it goes out towards another person, but it’s really our own. So whatever tenderness is building up at the idea of kids will find an outlet when the little buggers show up. (Universe, please see previous posts about hurry up already!)

Yet I can’t shake the feeling that I’m growing attached to the actual beings who are headed our way. This may be a story I tell myself, to get through the waiting and the ups and the downs. On the other hand, physics shows all this crazy stuff we can’t understand. There are particles that, once they’re in synch, they respond to each other, tilting to the same angle nearly instantly, over vast distances, via a method we cannot grasp. It just seems like magic.

So does it seem so very farfetched that the little rascal or rascals, wherever they’re hiding, are putting out their little tendrils even now, so we’ll be ready to feed them for 20 years and pay for college? It sound absurd, but so does adoption. So does venture capital. So, really, does love.