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Love Itself
Mom makes the best pancakes. Better than the chef. The chef makes them plain. Mom makes them with little bits of haybacon and chocolate chips in them. She also lets me put strawberry syrup on them instead of the regular kind.
That’s why I love my mom.
– Flurry Heart, age 6
Mom is letting us get a dog! We met her today at an adoption shelter. Her name is Bluebell. She licked my face and I got to take her for a walk. She loves me and I love her.
She can come home with us in a week after they do all the papers and her shots and stuff.
I can’t wait. I am very excited!
– Flurry Heart, age 10
Mom taught me how to make pancakes just like she does this morning. I wanted to learn because sometimes she’s too busy but I still want her pancakes and not the chef’s because mom’s way is better. So now I can make them myself any time I want. Maybe I can even make them for dinner. But probably not. The chef is always the one who cooks dinner, and she always sends me out of the kitchen. She’s kind of mean. Dad says she’s just passionate. Maybe he’s right if passionate means the same thing as jerk.
I could make the pancakes even better than mom does, I think. I can put in as many haybacon crumbles and chocolate chips as I want. Maybe blueberries and other stuff, too. I’ll try doing that sometime. And whipped cream on top! I was visiting Aunt Twilight and her friends and they put whipped cream on their pancakes at breakfast, along with strawberries and other fruit. Mom says I can try any pancake experiment I want.
– Flurry Heart, age 12
Dad has been gone for four months now. I miss him. I know mom really misses him. She writes a lot of letters. Dad sends a lot back to her and to me. I don’t really write very many because I don’t know what to write about usually. I wonder what mom writes about. Maybe they’re mushy love letters. I don’t think I would want to write anything like that anyway.
I wish I knew what he does during Guard deployments and why they have to last so long. Maybe someday I’ll be able to go with him on one instead of having to stay home, but it could be hard to get them to let me miss school for so long so maybe not.
I am excited that he will be home in a few weeks. I think Bluebell will be excited too and she will go NUTS like she always does when somepony is gone for a long time and then finally comes home.
– Flurry Heart, age 13
Dad came home today! We had aunt Twilight and grandma Velvet and grandpa Night Light come stay at the palace to meet him and we threw a surprise party for him when he arrived.
I cried when he hugged me. I didn’t think I would. I thought I was too old. But mom cried too so maybe you never really get too old.
– Flurry Heart, age 13
Mom is stupid.
She says I have to walk Bluebell myself, instead of just having the valet do it. That’s what the valet is for! Why even have one if you’re not going to use them?
Except of course SHE can use the valet. She can send the valet shopping for stupid little odds and ends. She runs out of makeup? Valet. She needs her dresses drycleaned? Valet. The kitchen ran out of milk? Valet. Even the chef gets to use the valet for that one! So why can’t I???
Like I said, stupid. So STUPID!!!!
– Flurry Heart, age 15
Mom had me attend the Midsummer’s Ball last night. It was okay.
I’m still bad at dancing and my horseshoes hurt and my dress wasn’t very comfortable, but mom let me have one glass of champagne (just one, so I tried to drink it slow and make it last) so it was okay.
There were a lot of cadets from the Military Academy, all in their dress uniforms. They were on leave for the night to be at the ball. Mostly they were unicorns from rich families in Canterlot. They kind of all looked like clones to me. Handsome clones in really nice tailored jackets and shirts, but clones. I could hardly even tell the mares from the stallions because they all have to wear the same thing, have the same manecut, the same everything. Dad went around shaking hooves with them and talking to them about how exciting it was when he was at the Academy and how proud he was of all the future officers of the Guard.
Maybe he should have told them about how much it’s going to suck when they’re gone on deployments for six months at a time. When they miss birthdays and holidays. When they miss the first snowball fight of the first snowfall of the winter with somepony they always used to be sure to never miss it with. I kind of wanted to warn them about that part, especially after I finished my champagne, but mostly they were all really polite and it was supposed to be a nice night for everypony, so I thought, why ruin it for them? I guess it’s not my problem and I think they’ll find out on their own, anyway.
– Flurry Heart, age 17
I decided not to apply for the Military Academy. I was concerned that dad might be upset but he didn’t seem to mind. I think he realizes that it’s not for me. Mostly he just wanted to know what else I was thinking about doing.
I wish I knew. Aunt Twilight doesn’t really have time for another personal student, and she says I don’t need to go to the Friendship School because I know enough about that already. I do think I want to learn more about magic, though. The advanced stuff, beyond Sunburst’s private tutoring for my high school degree equivalence. He’s a good teacher but we’ve kind of reached our limit of what he has to offer. I guess I could start applying to magic colleges? But I also don’t know if mom and dad will let me go away to school somewhere. I haven’t asked.
For now, mom has me shadowing her at court most days. It’s boring a lot of the time but I’m learning a lot about how important her job is and what ministers do and so on.
– Flurry Heart, age 18
I don’t think I can keep things going with Silver Shield. We can’t seem to stop arguing. I don’t know why. It’s not even about anything. Maybe I’m just being stupid. I don’t want to ruin a good thing but I’m not sure if this even is a good thing anymore.
Mom says every relationship has rough patches. She says they all take work. I know Silver Shield is really trying, and I love that. It makes me feel good and feel valued, but sometimes something can seem like it should be good without always actually being good. Like that time years ago when I tried to make pancakes with way too much mint extract in them because I thought they would turn out to be good like candy canes. Yuck. Not even Bluebell would eat those.
Maybe the real problem is that I know making an effort is a two-way street, but I can’t figure out what I should try to do to make things better between us.
– Flurry Heart, age 21
We’re officially done. Silver Shield decided she’s accepting her officer’s commission as soon as she graduates from the Military Academy. When she told me, I started crying. It surprised both of us. I didn’t mean to. I know being offered a commission is a really great thing for her, and I don’t want to take away anything from the achievement. I feel like a really bad pony.
We talked about what was the matter for a while. After we picked through things, I realized that I couldn’t do it. I remember what it was like with dad, and I can’t take the thought of going through this all over again, not if it’s going to be a career for her. I can’t do the deployments: waiting at home for six months or longer and not seeing a pony I love, having to live a relationship through letters and not really knowing what to write, feeling anxious all the time, having nightmares about what-ifs. I never told dad what kind of hell he put me through, because I knew it was hard enough for him, and I never blamed him, and I love him. But it was hell, and I’m not doing it again, not if I have to be the wife-left-at-home like mom was. Just thinking about it is making me shake while I’m trying to write.
I think that’s why we’ve been arguing so much, but we just didn’t know it because I always made it about something else without realizing it. Sometimes there’s things you’re afraid of but you don’t know what they really are, and they make you act in ways that nopony understands, not even yourself. When nopony can understand the problem, nopony can fix it. That’s why we couldn’t figure out how to work on us and really get anywhere.
Anyway we didn’t have a big blow-up screaming fight or anything. We just talked about things for a while, and decided she’s going to go live her life, and I’m going to live mine, and they’re going to have to be separate. It seems like we’re both pretty okay with this now that we understand more about why. I think I still love her, but just as a friend from now on.
I have a lot to think about, though.
– Flurry Heart, age 21
I told mom about what happened with Silver Shield. She was sympathetic but didn’t really have a lot to say, which was fine, because it was my choice. It was most important that she was just there for me. I talked her ear off about all of it, because having somepony to just listen helped me feel better.
After I finished all my complaining, I asked her how she was able to handle knowing that dad would keep going away for duty as an officer in the Guard. I didn’t understand how she could be that strong. Her answer surprised me. She said she really didn’t handle it particularly well. Looking back at it, she said she could see now how history repeats itself, because a lot of the arguments she had with dad were really from the same place that my arguments with Silver Shield had come from: the stress of separation and the anxiety of a distant partner. They were, like my own, sublimated into other things. Little things. Dumb things that shouldn’t have been fights at all. They only happened because they weren’t really about what they seemed like on the surface.
What surprised me most was that she said she was sorry. She felt like she’d set me up for this because of the example she’d created by giving in to those misdirected emotions that masked the real issue. She said she felt like she’d accidentally taught me to do the same, to create masks over deeper problems to avoid facing them directly.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe she did.
Still, I don’t blame her. If I couldn’t see it, I know she didn’t either. Not at the time.
Then she said she was proud of me for figuring out what she never could, and seeing the things that could have made me unhappy before it was too late. Not that I think it was a mistake for her to marry dad, or that she ever regretted it for even one second. I know she wouldn’t have done things any other way even if she’d known, because not everything has to be perfect to be good or to be something you want. Life is more complicated than that.
Mom is more complicated than that. That’s why there’s so much to learn from her.
– Flurry Heart, age 21
It was Bluebell’s time. I had to take her to the vet today.
A lot of ponies didn’t understand why I would take her there myself. I guess that’s a fair question. We have a valet, and why have one if you’re not going to use them?
Because love can’t be pawned off on somepony else to take responsibility for, not even the hard or inconvenient parts. Not even the part when you have to say goodbye. That’s why. It hurts so bad, but that’s why I know it’s real.
Right now, today, I hate my mom so much for setting me up for this—the worst day of my life, the day I lost my best friend, the one I walked and played with every single day for fifteen years. My chest feels like it’s caved in. My eyes and my throat hurt from crying.
So I hate her today. But only for today. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, or maybe next week, I won’t. Instead, I will be thankful she gave me the chance to love something so much, and that she made me understand what responsibility comes with it and makes it grow.
– Flurry Heart, age 25
Silver Shield is back in town, home from her latest deployment. We had a chance to meet up and hang out for a while today. It was really nice to be able to catch up and just decompress with a friend. I don’t get to do this often enough anymore.
I’m so glad I'm able able to see Silver Shield and keep being friends. I don’t think I could if not for my mom.
She made me into a pony who could do that. She never taught me to see things in judgmental terms, or in right and wrong, or good and bad, because it’s not that easy; different ponies judge the same things in different ways, and there’s right and wrong at the same time, and both good and bad in everything, especially in the things closest to you. The best things in your life can do the worst things to you, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t worth every second of it.
I realize something now:
Mom isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t matter. What she is, is love itself, and nothing is stronger or wiser than love.
That’s why my mom is my hero.
She always will be.
– Flurry Heart, age 31
That’s why I love my mom.
– Flurry Heart, age 6
Mom is letting us get a dog! We met her today at an adoption shelter. Her name is Bluebell. She licked my face and I got to take her for a walk. She loves me and I love her.
She can come home with us in a week after they do all the papers and her shots and stuff.
I can’t wait. I am very excited!
– Flurry Heart, age 10
Mom taught me how to make pancakes just like she does this morning. I wanted to learn because sometimes she’s too busy but I still want her pancakes and not the chef’s because mom’s way is better. So now I can make them myself any time I want. Maybe I can even make them for dinner. But probably not. The chef is always the one who cooks dinner, and she always sends me out of the kitchen. She’s kind of mean. Dad says she’s just passionate. Maybe he’s right if passionate means the same thing as jerk.
I could make the pancakes even better than mom does, I think. I can put in as many haybacon crumbles and chocolate chips as I want. Maybe blueberries and other stuff, too. I’ll try doing that sometime. And whipped cream on top! I was visiting Aunt Twilight and her friends and they put whipped cream on their pancakes at breakfast, along with strawberries and other fruit. Mom says I can try any pancake experiment I want.
– Flurry Heart, age 12
Dad has been gone for four months now. I miss him. I know mom really misses him. She writes a lot of letters. Dad sends a lot back to her and to me. I don’t really write very many because I don’t know what to write about usually. I wonder what mom writes about. Maybe they’re mushy love letters. I don’t think I would want to write anything like that anyway.
I wish I knew what he does during Guard deployments and why they have to last so long. Maybe someday I’ll be able to go with him on one instead of having to stay home, but it could be hard to get them to let me miss school for so long so maybe not.
I am excited that he will be home in a few weeks. I think Bluebell will be excited too and she will go NUTS like she always does when somepony is gone for a long time and then finally comes home.
– Flurry Heart, age 13
Dad came home today! We had aunt Twilight and grandma Velvet and grandpa Night Light come stay at the palace to meet him and we threw a surprise party for him when he arrived.
I cried when he hugged me. I didn’t think I would. I thought I was too old. But mom cried too so maybe you never really get too old.
– Flurry Heart, age 13
Mom is stupid.
She says I have to walk Bluebell myself, instead of just having the valet do it. That’s what the valet is for! Why even have one if you’re not going to use them?
Except of course SHE can use the valet. She can send the valet shopping for stupid little odds and ends. She runs out of makeup? Valet. She needs her dresses drycleaned? Valet. The kitchen ran out of milk? Valet. Even the chef gets to use the valet for that one! So why can’t I???
Like I said, stupid. So STUPID!!!!
– Flurry Heart, age 15
Mom had me attend the Midsummer’s Ball last night. It was okay.
I’m still bad at dancing and my horseshoes hurt and my dress wasn’t very comfortable, but mom let me have one glass of champagne (just one, so I tried to drink it slow and make it last) so it was okay.
There were a lot of cadets from the Military Academy, all in their dress uniforms. They were on leave for the night to be at the ball. Mostly they were unicorns from rich families in Canterlot. They kind of all looked like clones to me. Handsome clones in really nice tailored jackets and shirts, but clones. I could hardly even tell the mares from the stallions because they all have to wear the same thing, have the same manecut, the same everything. Dad went around shaking hooves with them and talking to them about how exciting it was when he was at the Academy and how proud he was of all the future officers of the Guard.
Maybe he should have told them about how much it’s going to suck when they’re gone on deployments for six months at a time. When they miss birthdays and holidays. When they miss the first snowball fight of the first snowfall of the winter with somepony they always used to be sure to never miss it with. I kind of wanted to warn them about that part, especially after I finished my champagne, but mostly they were all really polite and it was supposed to be a nice night for everypony, so I thought, why ruin it for them? I guess it’s not my problem and I think they’ll find out on their own, anyway.
– Flurry Heart, age 17
I decided not to apply for the Military Academy. I was concerned that dad might be upset but he didn’t seem to mind. I think he realizes that it’s not for me. Mostly he just wanted to know what else I was thinking about doing.
I wish I knew. Aunt Twilight doesn’t really have time for another personal student, and she says I don’t need to go to the Friendship School because I know enough about that already. I do think I want to learn more about magic, though. The advanced stuff, beyond Sunburst’s private tutoring for my high school degree equivalence. He’s a good teacher but we’ve kind of reached our limit of what he has to offer. I guess I could start applying to magic colleges? But I also don’t know if mom and dad will let me go away to school somewhere. I haven’t asked.
For now, mom has me shadowing her at court most days. It’s boring a lot of the time but I’m learning a lot about how important her job is and what ministers do and so on.
– Flurry Heart, age 18
I don’t think I can keep things going with Silver Shield. We can’t seem to stop arguing. I don’t know why. It’s not even about anything. Maybe I’m just being stupid. I don’t want to ruin a good thing but I’m not sure if this even is a good thing anymore.
Mom says every relationship has rough patches. She says they all take work. I know Silver Shield is really trying, and I love that. It makes me feel good and feel valued, but sometimes something can seem like it should be good without always actually being good. Like that time years ago when I tried to make pancakes with way too much mint extract in them because I thought they would turn out to be good like candy canes. Yuck. Not even Bluebell would eat those.
Maybe the real problem is that I know making an effort is a two-way street, but I can’t figure out what I should try to do to make things better between us.
– Flurry Heart, age 21
We’re officially done. Silver Shield decided she’s accepting her officer’s commission as soon as she graduates from the Military Academy. When she told me, I started crying. It surprised both of us. I didn’t mean to. I know being offered a commission is a really great thing for her, and I don’t want to take away anything from the achievement. I feel like a really bad pony.
We talked about what was the matter for a while. After we picked through things, I realized that I couldn’t do it. I remember what it was like with dad, and I can’t take the thought of going through this all over again, not if it’s going to be a career for her. I can’t do the deployments: waiting at home for six months or longer and not seeing a pony I love, having to live a relationship through letters and not really knowing what to write, feeling anxious all the time, having nightmares about what-ifs. I never told dad what kind of hell he put me through, because I knew it was hard enough for him, and I never blamed him, and I love him. But it was hell, and I’m not doing it again, not if I have to be the wife-left-at-home like mom was. Just thinking about it is making me shake while I’m trying to write.
I think that’s why we’ve been arguing so much, but we just didn’t know it because I always made it about something else without realizing it. Sometimes there’s things you’re afraid of but you don’t know what they really are, and they make you act in ways that nopony understands, not even yourself. When nopony can understand the problem, nopony can fix it. That’s why we couldn’t figure out how to work on us and really get anywhere.
Anyway we didn’t have a big blow-up screaming fight or anything. We just talked about things for a while, and decided she’s going to go live her life, and I’m going to live mine, and they’re going to have to be separate. It seems like we’re both pretty okay with this now that we understand more about why. I think I still love her, but just as a friend from now on.
I have a lot to think about, though.
– Flurry Heart, age 21
I told mom about what happened with Silver Shield. She was sympathetic but didn’t really have a lot to say, which was fine, because it was my choice. It was most important that she was just there for me. I talked her ear off about all of it, because having somepony to just listen helped me feel better.
After I finished all my complaining, I asked her how she was able to handle knowing that dad would keep going away for duty as an officer in the Guard. I didn’t understand how she could be that strong. Her answer surprised me. She said she really didn’t handle it particularly well. Looking back at it, she said she could see now how history repeats itself, because a lot of the arguments she had with dad were really from the same place that my arguments with Silver Shield had come from: the stress of separation and the anxiety of a distant partner. They were, like my own, sublimated into other things. Little things. Dumb things that shouldn’t have been fights at all. They only happened because they weren’t really about what they seemed like on the surface.
What surprised me most was that she said she was sorry. She felt like she’d set me up for this because of the example she’d created by giving in to those misdirected emotions that masked the real issue. She said she felt like she’d accidentally taught me to do the same, to create masks over deeper problems to avoid facing them directly.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe she did.
Still, I don’t blame her. If I couldn’t see it, I know she didn’t either. Not at the time.
Then she said she was proud of me for figuring out what she never could, and seeing the things that could have made me unhappy before it was too late. Not that I think it was a mistake for her to marry dad, or that she ever regretted it for even one second. I know she wouldn’t have done things any other way even if she’d known, because not everything has to be perfect to be good or to be something you want. Life is more complicated than that.
Mom is more complicated than that. That’s why there’s so much to learn from her.
– Flurry Heart, age 21
It was Bluebell’s time. I had to take her to the vet today.
A lot of ponies didn’t understand why I would take her there myself. I guess that’s a fair question. We have a valet, and why have one if you’re not going to use them?
Because love can’t be pawned off on somepony else to take responsibility for, not even the hard or inconvenient parts. Not even the part when you have to say goodbye. That’s why. It hurts so bad, but that’s why I know it’s real.
Right now, today, I hate my mom so much for setting me up for this—the worst day of my life, the day I lost my best friend, the one I walked and played with every single day for fifteen years. My chest feels like it’s caved in. My eyes and my throat hurt from crying.
So I hate her today. But only for today. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, or maybe next week, I won’t. Instead, I will be thankful she gave me the chance to love something so much, and that she made me understand what responsibility comes with it and makes it grow.
– Flurry Heart, age 25
Silver Shield is back in town, home from her latest deployment. We had a chance to meet up and hang out for a while today. It was really nice to be able to catch up and just decompress with a friend. I don’t get to do this often enough anymore.
I’m so glad I'm able able to see Silver Shield and keep being friends. I don’t think I could if not for my mom.
She made me into a pony who could do that. She never taught me to see things in judgmental terms, or in right and wrong, or good and bad, because it’s not that easy; different ponies judge the same things in different ways, and there’s right and wrong at the same time, and both good and bad in everything, especially in the things closest to you. The best things in your life can do the worst things to you, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t worth every second of it.
I realize something now:
Mom isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t matter. What she is, is love itself, and nothing is stronger or wiser than love.
That’s why my mom is my hero.
She always will be.
– Flurry Heart, age 31