But I’ve always been suspicious of the word “love,” what with its gross abuse and overuse. There is no cheaper word. I can’t say tell her I “love” her, because I don’t really know what “love” means except as it applies to one’s feeling for children—and then it may only mean one’s sense of responsibility for their terrible vulnerability, which they never asked for. One loves children, especially one’s own, because there they are, through no doing of their own, born into the same low farce you and I are living but not knowing it yet, being in fact as happy as doodlebugs and you and I would do
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