I thought my parents didn't love each other. I thought so for a very long time. I thought they could live with each other, learned to tolerate and become comfortable with each other—but that it wasn't love. Here are the reasons why I thought this. In earlier years, while our house was under construction, they argued a lot. Or I knew they would, because they closed their door at night; their muffled voices would rise and fade from behind the wood like tides. Mama later told me the points of strain in their relationship. It included building the new house and how it would accommodate Teta*; raising my youngest brother, Kareem, because he was troublesome and Baba got angry with him a lot; and when they first moved to Jordan without knowing anybody except Baba's family circle. My parents are not romantic. My dad doesn't like being hugged or kissed abundantly. He expects it, though, when he comes back from his travels. When mama tried to kiss him on the cheek, he'd grimace exaggeratedly and shy away. He was embarrassed— and I was there, looking, hoping. I speculated Mama might love him, but that he doesn't love her back. And that he's too introverted, and/or emotionally uninterested, and/or passive to seek out another person. Or split. Their marriage, from my child-eyed lens, wasn't horrible or anything. A part of me just expected all marriages to fail. To fade into complicit companionship and for nothing else to be left but that. I was trying to be a realist, and romance appeared too ideal. I figured love was a culmination of hormones that eventually ebbed and eroded into a sort of mild liking and appreciation for your partner— at best. Maybe I'm right. I was feeling mellow emotions during this time. I assumed everything else, therefore, inevitably mellowed. Baba doesn't like displaying affection. He doesn't show much of it. He, perhaps, is not good at being sappy. When we talk to him, he communicates in sarcastic remarks. He tries best to show us he cares about us by taking us on routine vacations, once or twice a year. I remember sitting in hotels a lot and going to restaurants. And walking. I began correlating vacations with boredom. I think it's the same with several kids and their families. I asked Mama if she loved Baba like she did at the beginning of their marriage. She says she loves him more now. My mom is the opposite of my dad in that she doesn't mind sounding cliché sometimes. Or sappy. She doesn't think what they had at the start of their marriage was really love—not like now. They seem on better terms these days. More comfortable than I remember any other time. But my memories could easily be betraying me, so I wouldn't take any of these speculative observations too seriously. I just know this speculative observation prompted me today to ask Mama if she loved Baba like she did the day they married. Although, I'd suspected from the narratives that they'd married on the cusping petals of a crush than a solid stem of adulation. Do you think love is familiarity? I imagine two people are like clay, like goo, like dough. If they stick together long enough, they blend together. Merge. One bulge pushes into the other person's lump, until one of them softens and makes a hollow, a concavity, to fit the other. And if you removed the remaining bulge off, you'd see the scoop it leaves. The space it occupied by creating. Or they both make hollows, in some parts here but not there. I can't imagine anything too spontaneous. Of love. When one instantaneously falls in love with someone, its because they noticed something achingly familiar about them. The way you like their hair, those brown waves?— you've already fallen in love with it from a cartoon character you'd watch every morning as a child. Or the hardened shell of their speaking is the same shell your uncle coated his words with, and during Eid gatherings he commanded with it. He would sit for minutes on end, captivating all the other relatives circling him in a traditionally oriental-decorated living room on flowery couches. You didn't understand what he was saying but you understood—even if perhaps without a formulated, conscious thought—what he was, in that moment. Maybe they are aspired to your ideal, someone you've already built in your head. So when the real thing comes along they mimic an appearance, a talent, or a persona you admire. They're familiar because you've wished and wished you were like that. You imagined yourself a million times over someone you aren't. Someone brilliant and cool. But its hard to be that. You've resigned yourself to whatever traits you have now—whatever extent of them. You've complied. You could only be them to be anything like them. And if you can't be them, then you'll want to be as close to them as possible. Am I close? teta*: informal term in Arabic meaning "grandma".