“He is a very intelligent young man, very agreeable. Fine family. But the question is, Do you love him?”

“Oh, papà, I don’t know! I got along with Jason very well. We understood each other. But sometimes I get terrified—terrified that I don’t know what love is and won’t recognize it—and so while I’m waiting for some miracle, some vision like your great-grandfather saw on his ship (except that it could happen in those days and it won’t happen now, or if it does, we haven’t the eyes to see it), I’m afraid I won’t know it. How did you and Mom know for sure it was love?”

“We put in the missing ingredient: faith. I don’t think anyone knows for sure; the most one can do, after his heart is stirred and he thinks, This is the creature God has sent me and with whom I will share my life and create new life—the most one can do then is to forge together, day by day, links of loyalty and patience with each other and understanding. And slowly, gradually, you see that it is, indeed, a pattern of love. I loved your mother very much; she was, in some ways, like another daughter, like my eldest and most vulnerable daughter whom I had to protect. And I would worry that I couldn’t do all that I wanted for her. She had a restless spirit, but she knew that I loved her.”

“I know she did, papà. But I think love is different these days—no one is going to think of daily links as setting the pattern for love. They’re going to think of them as making a chain to keep one from being free.”

“That depends on what freedom is for each one. There is great freedom, you will see, in love that is also giving up part of yourself; in comradeship and in sharing. It is the freedom from the dominant I, the insatiable I that will never be satisfied no matter how much you try to appease it by not involving yourself with other lives. Children are the perfect expression of love, but are they freedom? Not in the sense the young people of today view freedom. No, cara, you must have courage to love—and you will know the right person to love.”