1. When your friend gives you a dozen umbrellas (it’s a metaphor, but also, you can never have enough umbrellas)
Years ago, in the middle of a meandering conversation, I complained about umbrellas to a good friend (only a good friend would tolerate such a diatribe). I told her that I never had enough umbrellas and the umbrellas I did have were the super-cheapo kind that break the instant you unfurl them, and I said that my dream was to one day have a large collection of high-quality umbrellas. Was this a metaphor, my friend wondered, for wanting protection from the maelstrom of life? Maybe, I said, but mostly I just hated it when my wet jeans stuck to my legs and the contents of my purse got all soggy.
A few months later, on my birthday, this friend handed me a gift bag containing a dozen Totes umbrellas. Most of my dreams in life were more ambitious, she said, but this one was easy enough to realize, and so she’d made it happen. I realized she’d been listening, really listening that day, enough so that she’d remembered this tiny, throwaway thing I’d said. My heart swelled so much, it threatened to burst out of my chest cavity. But the true beauty of the gift was that every time I opened one of her umbrellas, and was spared a soggy-purse-and-wet-jean fate, that song of love was reprised in my heart.
2. When a toddler hands you something—anything—with their tiny, ever-sticky fingers
Rocks. Socks. Half-eaten lox. Defeated dandelions. Threadbare “lovies.” Goldfish crackers. The range of items toddlers will hand you is matched only by the range of reasons they will hand you these things. Sometimes they want your help—dispose of this, won’t you?—and sometimes they want to proffer a gift—this rotting crab leg made me think of you! Plenty of times, they don’t have any idea why they’re handing you the item; they just are.
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No matter who the toddler is, or their motive, or even the thing that’s being offered, when a miniature, pudgy hand puts something in yours, what they’re really handing over is a microdose of love. And possibly Coxsackie virus.
3. When your local barista zhuzhes your beverage just because
One summer in my early 20s, I went to Rome. Every morning, I looked forward to a cappuccino at the local café. A few mornings in, the barista handed over my beverage and I was gobsmacked. There, inscribed into the pillowy milk foam with a deft swirl of espresso, was a heart. For no reason. If I’d been in a film, the opening notes of “What a Wonderful World” would have undoubtedly started playing. A surge of tender feeling as formidable as Pompei’s volcano erupted in my heart.
When I returned home, I told my sister about it, and she pointed out that it was more than a little possible that the barista, being male and Italian, was trying to get into my pants. Some people are born cynics, immune to milky messages of love. So did the barista swirl a heart into the cappuccino of every eligible bachelorette who stopped by? Possibly. Did it lessen its impact on me? Assolutamenta no.
4. When public-restroom-goers warn you there’s no more toilet paper in a stall
I defy you to think of an act more unexpectedly tender than when a perfect stranger, emerging from a public restroom stall, warns you that there’s no toilet paper left. Because, really, it would be so easy for them to say nothing. It’s no skin off of their back if you discover the unpleasant surprise after you’ve dropped trou. What do they care if you’re forced to pillage your pockets for any spare scrap of tissue that might be lingering there?
“All outta TP” isn’t exactly the three little words one usually connotes with declarations of affection, true. But it’s a gesture of caretaking that unfolds in a very private space, and the intimacy of the exchange, I’d argue, puts it staunchly in the category of love.
5. When your neighbor’s pet likes you best of all
Maybe it’s the too-cool-for-school tabby cat that lives across the street and slinks in between your feet when you’re unloading your groceries from the car. Maybe it’s the parrots outside the corner laundromat, who never take the bait of passers-by when they croon, “Hello! Bye-bye! Hello!” but always reply to your greeting. Maybe it’s the mutt that drags his owner halfway down the block in his zeal to lick you like a lollipop. There’s nothing quite like being the object of affection for someone else’s pet.
We expect our pets to love us, and we earn this love by feeding them. But when an animal you do absolutely nothing for likes you best of all, you know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, it’s because you’re special. They can see your spark, and their affections remind you of what a gem you really are.
6. When you plant a seed and it actually grows
Some people have green thumbs, and some people have death thumbs that cause plants to shrivel up and die upon contact. You can guess which kind of thumbs I have. Every time I tuck a tiny seed into a mound of dirt, I summon optimism, but really I am thinking: This is never going to work. How is this going to work? Only Merlin possessed the magical powers required to make a plant actually grow.
So I feel positively anointed on the rare occasions when I glance at my flowerpot after planting a seed and notice—miracle of miracles—that something is there. Something green. Something triumphant. Against all odds, a living creature is growing. I have loved this seed by watering it and offering it the most choice indirect sunlight my living room has to offer. And this stunning specimen of botanical wonderment loves me back.
7. When you read a part in a book that describes an experience you thought only happened to you
You know this moment. You’re skipping along, or maybe trudging along, in the book you’re reading, and suddenly, a jolt of recognition flashes through you. You sit up straighter; you read the line again. Could it be? Is it possible? The author is describing a feeling or a thought or an experience that, up until now, you’d thought had only ever occurred to you.
Maybe it’s something tiny, like a character confessing they always mispronounced the word misled as “miseld.” Or maybe it’s something seismic, like a narrator describing his feelings of helplessness at discovering that he was losing his vision. Each of those two moments stopped me in my tracks, and have stayed with me for years and years because in a profound way, they let me know I was not alone. When you see a hidden part of yourself reflected in a book, what you feel is complicated: part kinship, part understanding, part self-compassion, part love.
8. When a romantic partner gives you the nickname you didn’t even know you always wanted
The alchemy by which a nickname is produced is a mystery indeed. Who knows what makes someone call their boyfriend Turtle or their sister Mrs. Kokomo or their child Teeny Tiny Peddler Woman.
I have always desperately wanted a nickname, and not trusting people to come up with adequate options on their own, I’ve supplied some and tried to make them stick. Nikki was my middle school attempt. Coco was the nickname I promoted post-college. They never caught on, not even a little. And then, I fell in love with David (who I called Ephraim) and he fell in love with me. And one of the ways I knew it was for real was that he gave me a nickname. It was not Coco. It was not Nikki. It was not Teeny Tiny Peddler Woman. It was the most literal of nicknames—Nik. If you’d asked me before he coined it, I’d have said it was a little, well, on the nose. But it wasn’t. It was perfect. Three kids and many years later, hearing the name issue from his lips makes me feel utterly and completely loved.
