Love Is Happy

"Love is Happy, Dada" - Kenzie

My daughter wanted to be the KC Streetcar for Halloween so I made her a cardboard costume, painted it, and got her some sticker sheets so she could help decorate it—hearts, unicorns, rainbows, you know the drill.

She was so diligent about it. Put all four sheets on, one sticker at a time. And while she was placing the hearts, she kept saying it over and over: “Love is happy, Dada. Love is happy.”

It’s such a simple thing for a 3-year-old to say. Surface-level. Innocent.

But it’s also the deepest thing I’ve ever heard.

Because love is a lot of things. And when you’re an adult, you learn all the complicated versions first. Love is sacrifice. Love is putting others first. Love is endurance. Love is toughing it out through the hard parts, staying committed when things get difficult, giving everything you have even when it hurts.

We’re taught that love is supposed to be hard. That if it’s not hard, maybe it’s not real love. That the struggle is proof of devotion.

And somewhere along the way, we forget that love is supposed to be happy.

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I gave everything for a long time. Time, money, parts of myself. I changed what I believed. I accepted things I didn’t want to accept. I thought that’s what love was—giving until there was nothing left, sacrificing until it hurt, and calling that devotion.

But giving into a void doesn’t create love. It just makes you feel small. And the sweetness that used to come naturally to me—the part of me that was caring and gentle and soft—it got lost in all that giving. It stopped feeling like a gift and started feeling like survival.

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I was a sweet kid. People told me that all the time when I was young. I got it from my mom—she was a kindergarten teacher, one of the most creative and kind people I’ve ever known. I never once heard her yell at anyone. Not once. She was just genuinely sweet, all the time.

She died a few years after I finished college, but I carry her with me (I always did, even when I was too sad to think about her). That sweetness, that care for other people—I got that from her.

And then somewhere along the way, I lost it. Or maybe I buried it. Maybe I thought I had to grow out of it—not just to be a man, but because the guys around me weren’t like that. I got confused. I didn’t know if I should keep being that way or if I needed to be something different to fit in, to be accepted.

But then I had my daughter.

And I couldn’t see myself until I saw her.

She’s unbelievably empathetic—way beyond her years. When her Mimi moved to a new house, she asked if we could get her a housewarming plant. Completely on her own. I didn’t suggest it. She just wanted to do something nice.

She asks about her cousins all the time. She wants to play with her friends, share things with them. If we’re getting a treat, she’ll say, “Maybe I can take this home for [my neighbor] Adaya.” She’s always thinking about other people. In every way possible.

She notices things. She feels things. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. I’ve never seen her push someone, steal a toy, or be mean to someone. Sometimes she’s even a little too timid, but I love that about her.

And watching her be that way—so sweet, so caring, so present—it’s like seeing a mirror of who I used to be. Who I still am, underneath everything. Who I want to be forever.

Maybe she got it from me. Maybe she got it from my mom and its just in her DNA. But either way, she’s teaching me that it’s okay to be sweet. That it’s not a phase you grow out of. That you can be an adult and still hold onto that part of yourself—the part that cares deeply, that notices when people are hurting, that wants to make things better just because.

She’s showing me that sweetness isn’t weakness. It’s the whole point.

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A few weeks ago, I was at my stepsister’s wedding. I was sitting at a table with all my cousins—most of them married, some for two years, some for ten or more. I’m separated, so this was the first family wedding I’d been to without my spouse.

During the speeches—those moments when people say beautiful, fluffy things about the bride and groom and your heart just swells—I wasn’t focused on myself. I was watching everyone else.

And I noticed something I’d never seen before.

All my cousins were looking at each other. Making eye contact. Sharing the happiness of the moment, deeply and quietly. Some of them have been together for years, and you could still see it—the way they looked at each other, the way they smiled, the way they were present with each other in that joy.

Behind us, at the parents’ and grandparents’ table, the older generation was doing the same thing—but they were watching us. Watching their children and grandchildren. Watching love happen in real time.

Both of my grandmas were at that table. Their husbands are gone. They would have been making eye contact with their partners, sharing that moment the way my cousins were. But instead, they were watching their grandchildren experience what they once had.

And I realized I was in a similar place. Not the same—death and divorce are different kinds of loss—but there’s an unexpected parallel. We were both at a table without our person. And instead of being bitter, we were both watching love unfold in front of us, learning from it, remembering what it looks like when it’s real.

It was strange, being in that position at 31. But it was also beautiful. Because I got to see love through three different lenses in that moment.

Through my daughter’s eyes: Love is happy.

Through my grandmas’ eyes: watching their grandchildren share joy with their partners, even after years together—joy they once knew and carried forward.

And through my own eyes: finally understanding what I need to see, what I want, what love is supposed to feel like.

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I don’t know what’s next for me. I hope I find love again someday. But this isn’t about that.

This is about being thankful.

Thankful for a daughter who can teach me about love when she’s only 3 years old. Thankful that the hard things I’ve been through have given me the ability to see moments like this with depth, to learn from them, to be inspired by them.

Thankful that I get to understand the difference between being childish and being childlike.

Childlike is wonder, presence, sweetness, curiosity, genuine emotion. And I want to be childlike in almost every way possible. Because that’s where the truth lives. That’s where love lives.

My daughter taught me that with four sheets of stickers and a cardboard streetcar.

Love is happy. That’s the core. That’s what matters. The hard parts are edge cases—they happen, and you deal with them, but they shouldn’t define what love is. At its core, love should make you feel safe. It should make you feel seen. It should make you feel like a kid again in the best way.

And now I know that. Because a 3-year-old told me while decorating a streetcar.