When my momma first taught me about the birds and bees, I was 12 and unimpressed. When my momma first taught me about love at 16, I was intrigued, but nonetheless, uncaring. I didn't think love existed at the time. Though I was singing of great puppy love and all of those sorts, I never thought much about the real thing while traveling around the world. Sometimes late at night, I'd sit around and stare at the stale taupe wallpaper in my hotel room and pretend like I had things to do when I really didn't. I'd busy myself with successfully opening and closing all of the smooth wooden drawers which sometimes included bibles bound in scratchy blue materials. I'd make sure my towels were crisp and white and that my tissue paper never ran out in my bathroom. I always did find it odd that they always painted hotel rooms a certain shade of taupe; though someone told me it was supposed to be relaxing, but I always thought otherwise. If not the taupe walls, then the blue bound bibles. Could bibles not be any other color but blue? Could that be the international shade for the bible? It's funny what you think about alone in your hotel room at strange hours of the night. Eventually it would all lead me to think about the words my mother cooked into my mind. "Justin, believe me when I say love isn't as fragile as they say it is. If it's fragile at all, then it must be adoration. Adoration teeter totters and it seems to have all the characteristics of love. But trust in me when I say it isn't all that we've waited years for. Adoration is just another apple in the orchard. But real love, darling, is an undaunted battle. Ask the woman you love for her definition of love and perhaps that wishy-washy look on your face will disappear." At the time, I had thought nothing of it. There was no significant other in my life that made me think about undaunted battles, just apples in a plethora of orchards. So at 21, I began to wonder if I would ever engage in something deeper than fleeting adoration. It was so easy to lose myself in all of the hype of finding real love, but the words of my very own flesh stuck to me like I had never imagined it would. I had never listened to her when she told me to put a jacket on in fears of catching a cold, but somehow, this little light of true love and her words dawned on me feverishly. It was until I had least expected it, but it came. It came on a cold Tuesday morning. Of all days. Tuesdays. I didn't even like Tuesdays. She was someone I had not expected. I didn't imagine her as someone worth more than my adoration. But she had captured me and I suppose, that was all I needed. When I asked her of real love, she had an answer that set me back into all the yesterdays of my past and right back into the tender age of 16. Her definition of love gave light to everything and perhaps it was more understandable than my own mother's, my very own blood.
"Justin, there is no definition of love. There are just mere references. I'll be truthful with you, love is like music from another room. You know the song, but you can't identify how exactly it got there and where it came from. And even years from then, when you're sitting on the benches, waiting for a subway, you hear the music still playing in your head. It never eludes you because when you're caught up in the music, it won't go away as long as you still let it go on in your mind."
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