A four-letter word

It’s a meme! A love list:

I love being a mother. I love my daughter and the way she can make my heart lift by simply looking at me while pointing her hand in the general direction of whatever it is she wants and saying “de?” I love the way her hair stands up in all directions and the smell of her neck when she snuggles close. I love her sticky little hands and her perfect ears and toes and fingers and all. I love the way she’s discovered communication and how her vocabulary is increasing steadily. I love how she falls asleep in my lap and forces me to stay stationary for however long it takes because I don’t have the heart to wake her up. I love how she hardly ever says ma-ma or ba-ba, even though she is perfectly able to, because we’re always right there so there’s no need to call us. I love that she is independent enough to accept being left with her minder or with her grandparents without complaining. I love the way she is delighted to see me when I return and drops whatever she is doing to come and give me a hug. I love how she’s turned my world upside down in more ways than I thought possible. I love the way I love her so much I think my heart might burst whenever I hear her laugh and that it breaks a little every time she cries.

I love rain and wind. I love going for walks along the seaside when you can hardly stand up straight because it’s blowing so hard. I love going out in the rain in the summer and getting soaked through to the skin. I love coming back from a wet and windy walk and snuggling up with a blanket and a warm drink. I love thunder and lightening. I love watching a thunderstorm roll in towards where I’m standing, the flashes and crashes getting closer, the closer the storm gets.

I love my husband. I love the way he makes me laugh. I love the way he makes my heart melt when he smiles. I love the fact that he can’t be bothered to get a haircut until his hair is way too long and gets in his eyes and how he then gets it cut so short he looks like a little kid whose mom has instructed the barber to give him “a cut that will last the summer”. I love the way he interacts with our daughter, and the way his love shows on his face and in his body language when he’s with her. I love the way he buys me tulips at odd times just because I love them. I love the way he cooks bacon and I love his homemade pizza. I love the way he loves me.

I love my parents. I love my father’s hugs. I love the way my mother and I will laugh until we cry for the smallest thing. I love that I am able to consider my parents as friends.

I love music. I love putting on my favourite songs at full volume and singing along.

I love dancing. I love it when everything comes together in a set of Scottish country dancing and people fly through the room in a perfectly coordinated pattern. I love dancing strip the willow with my husband and spinning so fast we can hardly stand when we’re done.

I love photography. I love seeing the world from new angles. I love attempting to catch the moment. I love my Canon EOS 300D and I love that I can see the result of my experiments immediately. I love being able to manipulate the image in Photoshop, or to leave it be just the way it is, perfect in its imperfection.I love computers. I love getting dug into a piece of code and having it finally, magically come together and work. I love the internet and its possibilities.

I love my friends. I love how we can hardly talk for ages – years – and then still pick up just where we left it when we meet again. I love that they accept it if I say I have to call them back because I’m in the middle of a book I can’t put down.

I love Scotland. I love the people, the landscape, the literature, the music, the dancing, the accent, the pubs, the whisky and even the weather.

I love single malt whisky. I love the way every single bottling tastes different from the last. I love the skill and craft that goes into making a good malt. I love the touch of magic that the wood brings, making each cask a surprise, even to the most knowledgeable of experts. I love the myths and stories that are perpetuated by the people in the business and I love that no one really knows which ones are at least partly true and which ones are pure fiction. I love the smells of a distillery, the shock of malted barley flour in the mill room, the breakfasty smell of the mash, the CO2-infested beery smell of the wash, the warm, heady, sulfury smell of the new spirit as it runs off the still and the damp, mouldy smell of the warehouse – shhh, whisky sleeping. I love the people who work in the business, how they – almost without exception – really love what they do. I love their fierce loyalty to “their” distillery and how they grudgingly admit to some other malts being “rather nice”. I love the enthusiasm of whisky lovers and the nitpicking, extremely detailed and downright nerdy discussions we get into.

I love the sea. I love walking along a beach on a sunny day and I love the way the waves crash on the rocks in a storm. I love the soft breeze carrying wafts of saltiness and seaweed and I love the heady spray of troubled waters.

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