Love.

My 5-year-old daughter ran into a boy from her kindergarten class at Target today. They said hi to each other and flashed embarrassed smiles, each looking shyly back at their mothers. Then the boy reached out a hand and gave my little girl a penny he had clutched in his sweaty, little boy palm. Now she is in “love” and has declared that he is her boyfriend and they are going to get married- after they play together on the playground more next week, of course. Moving a bit fast, I thought, but who am I to question young love?

Certainly a 5-year-old’s version of love is based mainly on Disney movies. And they have certainly come up with some very skewed portrayals- love is instant, love is easy (once all of the bad guys have been dealt with), love is forever, love conquers all. The incongruence of those ideas, pleasant as they may be, with reality is so striking that I fear my daughter will grow up thinking that all it takes is a penny (or a charming smile or a cool car, etc) to buy her favor. Somewhere I have to slip in the lesson that she’s got to love herself first in order to really know her own worth, and therefore recognize when others see it too- easier preached than practiced.

That’s not to say that Disney hasn’t smartened up since the days of Cinderella and Prince Charming when it comes to that stuff. In fact their most recent movie, Frozen, included the brilliant line from one princess to another- “You can’t marry a man you just met!” The love-at-first sight relationship in that case crashes and burns, leaving the struggling princess to fall in love with someone after getting to know him. Imagine that. It even shows the strength of loving a friend, ie. a talking snowman who declares that “Some people are worth melting for.”

What Disney is finally learning is that love is so much more than the perfectly fitting glass slipper. Love is ugly, and bumpy, and sometimes uncomfortable. It’s about sacrifice and compromise and getting through the bad days. It’s about knowing yourself well enough to know what works for you and what doesn’t. It means leaving when it’s wrong and sticking it out when it’s right- even when doing those are the most difficult things you can imagine. And the kicker? When you take all of those things, add all of the good stuff and stand back to take a look? It looks different to every set of eyes on the planet, meaning it’s undefinable and unexplainable.

In the near future I know my daughter will have some larger questions about love that I will need to be prepared to answer. So what does love look like for me? Love. I can’t lie. It’s been a far trickier road than I ever thought it could be. It’s been about giving up on a fairy-tale that I fought so hard to put a good face on, that it took far too long to admit that the ground had crumbled away beneath my feet. It’s been about finding ways to love myself even when I didn’t think I was worth the time. It’s been about reaching out when I needed a lifeboat to cling to. It’s been about friendship and honesty and growing. It’s been about pain and new definitions of loneliness. It’s hope and peace and starting from scratch so many times. It’s about newness and certainty and joy. It’s about happily using a heart that’s far more weathered than I ever thought it would be. It’s about green grass after a very cold winter.

I had to have the first, very simplified, birds-and-bees talk with my baby today. (As in, “No kissing until you are 18, got it?”). She walked away singing a song to herself about love. My little princess. Someday she’ll fall in love for real. And her heart will get broken too- it’s all part of the same deal. She’ll pick it up and put it back together and move on. We all do it. Her idea of love will grow and change and hurt and heal. I’ve known it all, and have plenty more to learn too. C’est la vie.