A Secret Turn-on for Mothers

People feel loved when you love what they love.

No, I’m not describing a narcissist; this is about values, and acting on your values. Feeding them, even.

We are all busy

Days pass too quickly.

We’ve given up spending hours with our children because paid work takes 40+ hours each week, and for most of us, much more. So we give in to the myth of “quality time” and designate some few hours as such, and that is what we spend with our children. Some bit of time kachunked between grocery shopping, hockey practice, and errands on Saturday, or maybe between the Sunday afternoon lawn mow and barbecue. After all, quality time is certainly better than nothing and what most of us reach for in our too-busy world.

We’ve named it something to designate it “special” but really, it’s because no one has just simple “time” anymore.

The frazzled time

I’m aging. My boys are all in their twenties, and the oldest almost thirty.

But I remember a time — not so long ago, it seems — when they were young and rambunctious. When I was “frazzled” — they still tease me with that word — and my husband would take the scant hours he had to go golfing. In fairness, he probably needed that time; he did love the game.

But weekends, one son would do the lawn mowing, and I the garden watering, and we — even the youngest boys and I — would prep the barbecue, and then their dad would come home, and we’d all sit to outdoor dinner. And we would talk and share our days, and our week. A funny story about a ball in the pond on hole #15 , and some anecdote from yesterday baseball practice, and hey, let’s play guitar and sing a song…

Suddenly, all felt right with the world.

Here’s the secret

When I saw my children’s father enjoying time with them, playing with them, being together with them, all the crusty miserable stuff that takes over when you work a 50+ hour week as I did then, along with taking care of, and nurturing, young children, and doing the multi-tasking of keeping home and household together (the list never ends; I’ll stop it here)…well, it has a tendency to make you crawl into bed every night, turn away and go to sleep. Snore and drool sleep. Heavy, don’t-you-dare-wake-me-up sleep.

But when I watched and heard my spouse play with our children, something magical happened. It made me soften. It made me feel love. And desire.

Someone who understands human biology will give you an explanation about something evolutionary, possibly, but for me it was about the tangible love all around. The laughter, the happy. The time spent. Time and family.

The way to a heart is through the stomach? No. The way to a heart is through the heart.

Love what your loved or loving one loves. Follow the love. It’ll connect.

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Previously Published on medium

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