I felt she saw into me, past every facade and flourish, and that the more she knew me, the more she loved me. I was too young, then, to know how lasting this kind of love is, how rarely it comes into one’s life, how difficult it is to accept oneself, let alone another. I carried this security — Ai-ming’s love, the love of an older sister — out of my childhood and into my adult life.
"The more she knew me, the more she loved me." I always love this thought, because, in the heart, what is there between knowledge and love? Do they not occupy the same space? There is more generalized love, I suppose. And there are kinds of love that are more about desire, or about ourselves. So, yes, the kind of compassionate love that is inescapable and indelible and as true as the knowledge we hold of another soul......... "I was too young, then, to know how lasting this kind of love is, how rarely it comes into one’s life, how difficult it is to accept oneself, let alone another."
