Questions for My Parents About Love // Aurora Stewart de Peña

In Grade nine English, we wrote paragraphs about a day in our adult lives. I described this scene: My live-in boyfriend and I sit together at a rough-hewn table in our industrial loft space, drinking Americanos with no sugar. I’m a writer, and he’s a chef at the kind of restaurant that serves sun-dried tomato hummus in the ’90s. We discuss music and art. There’s a New Yorker flopped open on the vintage sofa. His copper pots hang above our heads on hooks from the ceiling. We have a cat. I’d witnessed this kind of casual performance of love at home, though not between my mother and father. They’d separated when I was young, and they were both involved with other people. I’d walk into the dining room to find my actress mother’s poet boyfriend reading to her with candles on the table. Or I’d see my father’s girlfriend, a chef school graduate and photographer, pour him another glass of wine while they assembled a collage depicting crumbling industrial buildings in old Montreal, her sophisticated cookware gleaming in the background. I was unconsciously determined to find a partner who would build something calm with me. Maybe we could do what I’d seen done at home and pursue excellence in the arts together in some messy, elegant place. Maybe we’d buy giant old shelves from stores going out of business and project movies right on the wall, and never, ever fight. But, that wasn’t what made me. I was from the confused, intricate, sweet, intense world of my mother and father combined. They shared a surreal secret language made of song lyrics, lines from plays, and a catalogue of special looks. They always misunderstood each other. I was born from that misunderstanding. I carry it inside me. We’re not the sole authors of our desires. Our behaviours are shaped by the actions of our parents, who are shaped by the actions of theirs, and on and on into the infinity of our ancestors until we’re forced to imagine a primeval slime creature trying to look like they’re not looking at their crush across the algae protein deposit. Like I have a blend of my parents’ features, my mother’s eye shape, my father’s slow way of speaking, I have their ideas about love; who to fall in love with, what makes a good partner, and what a partnership should be. These ideas are inside me, and I’ve acted on them without ever questioning where they came from. I’ve reacted to them without ever wondering what I’m reacting to. It’s so intuitive, it’s like a dance I learned to do forever ago, and now my body just knows. My feet start moving before I tell them to. So do my feelings. I've been married for three years, now. I've been in a relationship for almost 10. The initial flush of behaving perfectly and looking as beautiful as possible is over, and all I'm left with are my impulses. I'm worried they might be the wrong ones. I wanted to know where they come from, and whether my parents had the same ones. I interviewed my mother and my father separately. 

My mother: I had no model for romantic love. My mother did everything by herself. And my grandparents—they had this very Victorian way of relating to each other. My concept of romantic love comes from a pretty big mish-mash of sources. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, South Pacific, West Side Story, The Sound of Music … getting swept into that idea of someone liking someone, but not really knowing what that liking is. It was pretty innocent. 

Me: Who did you love when you were young? 

My father: I remember dancing with her, but I can’t remember her name. She was lovely and willowy and had a dark complexion and dark hair. She was Séfarade, so she wasn’t really supposed to be in contact with me. I was in Grade seven, and we went to school together. Louise! Her name was Louise. It was very one-sided. 

Me: Did you tell her how you felt? 

My father: I was fucking 12, of course I didn’t. 

My mother: I remember being drawn to one young guy called James Cantino. I was weird in school, but he didn’t treat me like I was weird. I would just—oh, it was horrible—I would just stare at him. They had a fish fry at the local fair every year, and they would bring in rides. And they would have those hideous fish fingers that Catholics are so addicted to—anyway, I followed him around the whole fair. I would just … be where he was. 

Me: (Laughing) Were you by yourself? 

My mother: Yup! I was frequently by myself. Anyway, I realized that at the line up for the Ferris wheel, the guy who was filling it wouldn’t let seats stay empty. One or two people would get on, and he would say, “There’s two more spaces here—anybody?” And then the people behind would join them. So, there was James Cantino, in line for the Ferris wheel, and I had worked it out so I was right behind him. And the guy loading the Ferris wheel pointed at me and said “You, come on!” and I remember James Cantino’s eyes opening wide, and he just leapt out of the cart. 

Me: Oh no! Were you hurt by that? 

My mother: I was undeterred. 

Me: How do you know when you’re in love with somebody? 

My father: In the moment, it’s definitely biological. It’s almost just a glance, a flash. It’s a connection. You look at someone, and all sorts of stuff starts to happen. It’s distracting and plumbs the depths of what we laughingly call the soul, and it’s happened to me a lot in my life. 

Me: Is there something in common with the people that flash at you? 

My father: Eyes. 

Me: What kind of eyes? 

My father: Well, two. One on either side of the face. We talk to each other through our eyes. I’ve always been someone who was in relationships with girls, but I’ve had a couple of boy crushes. They passed, because all love is just that momentary flash and then you can build off it. The flash has to be nurtured for it to turn into something. And now, I know better than to nurture it. 

Me: What did you learn about love from your mother? 

My father: Her love wasn’t responded to, it wasn’t returned. I think my mom loved my dad more than my dad loved her, but that changed with time. I was surprised at the depth of my father’s feelings when my mom died. From my father, I learned what not to do. There was a lot of dismissiveness in their relationship, so I had to learn to not be dismissive. My mother taught me how to drink, smoke, and play cards.

Me: What you learned and didn’t do was as important as what you learned and did do.

My father: And was I always capable of not doing what I saw? No.

My mother: Your father was not dismissive of me. But yeah, his father was terrible to Clare. 

Me: What’s the difference between love and in love?

My mother: Compromise, sacrifice. If you’re in love, I think that implies the entanglement you have when you’re younger, when you’re less independent. And you wouldn’t let go of them. Even if it brought your or their destruction. It’s not necessarily healthy. The difference is, if you really love someone, it’s mature, it’s considered, it’s protective, and it’s to benefit everybody involved. We think love is finding one person in your life, and they’re going to be everything. That’s stupid. No one person can be everything. We’re social animals. Of course, maintain your fidelity, but your partner doesn’t have to be the only person that you talk to. That’s too much weight on them. I definitely thought my marriage would be this focused arrow at one person. It was probably terrifying.

Me: Do you know what love is? 

My mother: Yeah, I think I do. It’s when someone else’s happiness comfort and safety are as important as your own—in many cases more important than your own.

My father: I think love is a condition that changes through time. It starts with that flash, that absolute mad passion. And then it transmutes to that desire to always be in contact with, if not physically then emotionally. And then it keeps on changing through time, until it gets to the point that it’s not “love” anymore, it turns into a deep comfort with the other person. 

Me: Is that comfort different than friendship? 

My father: Oh yeah, because a friendship is something you have with someone you’re not in love with. Love is what starts a relationship, it’s the foundation, but a relationship is a lot more. The relationship is being there. They’re there, and you’re there. That there-ness is what’s important, because you’ve worked out all the flashes and the hormones and the passion. And you’ve chosen them. There’s a peace in that.