I recall a friendship that went sour. Mistrust crept in like invasive vines, and we both stepped back into the shadows.

She is not the first person to bark at me. Nine children navigated the years between two and five which inevitably involve tantrums. I've weathered black eyes, bite marks, and piercing screams at midnight.

There were teenagers who hurled insults at me and others who refused to be kissed. Plenty complained dramatically to their friends and not too secretly longed for a different lineage.

Yet the mother child bond is more tenacious than temporary regard.

Loving people when they behave requires little perseverance and less self compulsion. If you want it to be easy to show affection get a puppy.

What is amazing to me is how the lean times have been sandwiched in between moments of spontaneous generosity. It is the memory and momentum of those days that has fueled the stretches in between.