TRANSCRIPT

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

One of my favorite questions in life is when someone asks, How much do you love me? And then the friend, lover, partner, parent, child will say This much and spread their arms wide apart in a gesture meant to signal a lot. 

In the classic 90s film White Men Can't Jump, Rosie Perez's character, Gloria, poses this very question to boyfriend Billy, played by Woody Harrelson: How much do you love me? she asks. Billy responds, I love you infinity. That’s not enough, Gloria says. 

Billy: Infinity’s the biggest number there is. 

Gloria: It’s not. 

Billy: What’s bigger? 

Gloria: Infinity plus two. 

The question is a challenging one, though, because affection is not quantifiable, which is why I am always speechless or caught off guard by it. I feel love from the depth of my being. How can I give a calculable sense of that? I can only reach for language and metaphor, with hopes that my wit captures the far reaches of my feelings. I might give a goofball answer like, “I love you more than I love my nose.”

The question is also challenging because love does not arrive on the daily in grand symbolic gestures. Affection is signaled in minute ways, if at all; it is one of the lessons we mature into: a random phone call between siblings, a box of favorite cookies brought to the office by a coworker, the completion of a daily household routine like taking out the trash or cleaning the cat litter which might make a roommate or partner’s life just a little bit better. 

Why do we need to know how much we are loved? In a way, aren’t we asking how thick is the shield of affection that protects us from the world, maybe even from ourselves? This most powerful of human feelings literally boosts our immune system and decreases blood pressure. We need to know that if we fall, we are reassured that we will be caught. Maybe it’s evolutionary, or maybe it’s deeper even than that. 

Today’s poem shows us how the most mundane acts connect us strongly to one another. Thoughtful actions blaze eternally as evidence of ongoing diligence, care, and patience.

Love Language
by Angela Narciso Torres

Across the breakfast table, 
the stirring and sipping of coffee.
Ice-blue light flickers from his phone,
sheening the crags of his face. Later
he’ll chisel the cracked earth, lift 
the rosebush, a stray tangled in
thistle and vine, riddled with snails.
Gently he’ll pluck the stubborn shells,
lay them in the grass. In a clay pot
he’s made a bed to plant the rose.
But first he’ll nip between thumb 
and forefinger each black-pocked leaf.
The roots he’ll loosen with a garden hose,
running fingers through the strands
as one washes a daughter’s hair.
Tomorrow he’ll scan the knuckled
stems for buds, furled in the sun
like words about to be spoken.

"Love Language" by Angela Narciso Torres. Used by permission of the poet.