my mother handed out love in admonishments about clean shoes and brushed teeth to try our best and not to bleat about a life hard and oft incomplete....it is only now after years of growing in understand it is not because she was hard, uncaringΒ Β but that she was as fragile as spun glass so much already taken stolen by this world...her mother while in her teens first love taken by vietnam war machine, first child, daughter a few days old...and then three live children, later husband taken by gambling and a woman she considered a friend. those simple words became hard to say....to admit love was to have it ripped away. so she taught herself, this terse morse of words imbued with love..take a jumper... have you got your books all double entendre just in care not risque with love bespoke.... as children we learnt to find the deeper meaning to parse conversations for love...sifted by despair...