There is a person who doesn't like me. At least she claims as much when I arrive at her apartment. She tells me to go home before my shift ends and snaps when I help her with her coat. Or when I don't. I have too many keys for her tastes and she is dubious about my driving. Sometimes the coffee I set at her place is too hot and other times it's too cold.

But today she made me laugh and smiled when I complimented her new hairdo. The lunch met with her approval or at least escaped her disapproval. I offered to take her out to see the Christmas lights, which caught her interest. 

Still what matters more than her fancies is that I drove her safely to a doctor's appointment, which I feel certain she would not have managed to do without me.

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.

One time I banished a recalcitrant son to his bedroom. Yelling continued. I forbade noise. After a brief reprieve I heard a timid voice.

"Do you still love me?"

"Just barely." I huffed.

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.