In my past before this love I know now, I feebly tried to project this deep, knowing love onto whomever I was with at the time. It was better received at certain times than others, but it resulted in a lot of blurry, low resolution versions of the love I experience now, however the description is the same.

We try so hard in our lives to describe our love to each other and, after a while, words just can’t do it justice and you must communicate using terms and definitions you both can agree on. It can be difficult to say these three, small words and still have them mean something more when you really mean something more. I had said these words before, but never had been able to articulate what I meant when I really meant more. There are many ways to try: “I love you to the moon,” “to the moon and back,” “to the stars…” etc. etc. etc. It made me begin thinking of ways to describe love as an unfathomable distance-amount. What’s at the end of the universe? More universe? We often like to put boundaries around things we don’t fully understand and from a young age I always thought there was possibly a brick wall around the edge of our galaxy. And even still, past that brick wall could be another brick wall to contain all the galaxies.

But, that leads to a question: what’s past the brick wall? I don’t know and I don’t think we’re meant to know. In the case of how I tell my wife and sons how much I love them: there’s only more love past the brick wall. We often just simply say “past the brick wall” when we’re referring to the entire statement, but the sentiment is the same; enormous amounts of love.

Our oldest son has started saying the phrase back to us and there’s something about hearing it in a genuine, little man voice that adds validity to the simplicity of the concept: further out than the known universe, “my love for you goes on forever and ever;” “I love you past the brick wall.”

[kyle]