Once upon a time, I took four children between the ages of two and six for a walk to visit seven goats whose names each began with G. The goats lived on a small farm less than one dirt-road mile from where I lived. It was a beautiful day and in my inexperienced, delusional innocence I sincerely believed that the children would be delighted by seven G-named goats.

I was wrong.

For those of you that manage many children on the regular: god freaking bless you. Personally, I’ve learned to be fearful in situations wherein preschool bodies outnumber my own by a factor of two or more. The children I was with that day weren’t just garden-variety kids though. Two of the cherubs were my own kids and the other two girls were the kind of friends that feel like family. Around the time she was five, the older of these two girls, Violet, remarked that my kids felt like cousins to her. But since she understood that there’s no blood relationship between us, she asked her mom if we were her in-laws. Her mom explained that in addition to not having a blood-tie, there’s also no legal relationship between us; our families just love each other a bunch. Upon hearing this, darling Violet exclaimed, oh, so they’re our out-law cousins! We’ve referred to each other’s families as Outlaws ever since.

On the day of the Great Goat Calamity of 2009, I hadn’t brought enough snacks or water to get us through the voyage. I had brought some—I wasn’t completely incompetent—but supplies ran out and the stirrings of mutiny were already evident by the time introductions to the seven G-goats were being made. After a hot minute of pulling up grass for the goats, the kids gave clear signals that we had better wend our way back (i.e., my boy was whining and Violet’s younger sister, Laura, was starting to cry. Did I mention the mile? It’s been scientifically proven to triple in distance with a crying toddler).

Having already been familiar with a toddler's penchant for not walking, I pulled them along in a wagon. At first, Violet and my daughter crammed into the wagon, but the younger kids complained of being squished and one of the back wheels began to protest. So the older girls walked along behind the wagon. We came to a slight decline in the road and the wagon picked up speed as the girls trotted behind to keep up. Before I knew it, that back wheel popped off and my daughter collided with the wagon before she could stop herself. My poor kiddo was scraped, bloody, and crying. I screwed up my eyes to search for flesh-eating bacteria entering her wounds. Then I realized that my boy was also crying because he had fallen out of the wagon. So I frantically checked him for signs of concussion and/or broken bones. (Disclaimer: I have a lot of anxiety. We had only been going roughly speed-walker pace; everyone was fine.) I was surrounded by a Greek chorus of hurt, scared, crying children. Poor Laura sat in the wagon howling louder than everyone else put together. She was tired. She was hungry and thirsty. Most importantly, she missed her own, far more competent mother and she couldn’t bear the separation any longer. Around this time, sweet Laura was going through a phase where she would tell me that she "needed some comfort" when her mom wasn’t around. It meant that she wanted cuddles, some quiet, or a soothing voice. This young woman has always been preternaturally articulate. Comfort was a fluid thing that I had to decode in the moment, but in the midst of the Great Goat Calamity, I was really worried about the kids who were hurt and dazed, and I had to prioritize their needs. I told Laura very firmly that I needed to hear the other kids and that I’d give her some comfort in just a moment. She went silent immediately and I felt a tidal wave of guilt over it. I went about wiping away flesh-eating amoeba and discerning pupil dilation. Out of nowhere, Violet suddenly piped up, oh, I get it! You love us like our mom loves us! I was so startled by this statement that I turned to look at her. She assured me that her mom would’ve told Laura the same thing. Then Violet proceeded to jump in and soothe Laura herself by convincing her that there was a stand-in ready to love, help, and comfort until she could see her own mom again. It worked; Laura was pacified. She even hopped out of the wagon to help me fix the wheel and began to enjoy herself. By the time her mom met us at the end of our walk, she was laughing.

The Great Goat Calamity of 2009 is one of my favorite memories with my Outlaw Kids. Why? Because it’s such a beautiful example of the Greek word storge. Storge roughly translates to affection and refers to the kind of love you share with your family. The most common example is the relationship between parents and children, and it's usually explained as being instinctive in nature. That day, six-year-old Violet not only recognized that Laura needed some storge, but she also provided it. And don’t forget Laura, who at three-years-old, was perceptive and articulate enough to verbalize a request for storge in her mother's absence. I hope these precocious sisters always retain these skills.

That said, I feel somewhat troubled by the assumption that such love is always or only instinctive. I think storge can certainly be cultivated and developed; I’ve cultivated it with the Outlaws. When I was pregnant with my own children, I was counseled by medical professionals that I might not feel that over-the-moon, all-encompassing love the second I laid eyes on my baby and that that was perfectly normal because love develops as the bond does. That makes perfect sense to me; parents can love adopted or fostered children every bit as much as biological children. And sometimes biological parents never develop a love bond with their child. Those bonds must be cultivated. In his book, The Four Loves1, C.S. Lewis wrote about storge:

“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.” (53)

Lewis is pointing out that a foundation of storge is the grounding for our entire lives. We can experience and project this love, as Violet and Laura did, and sometimes we don’t. Lewis looks to King Lear as a case study in warped storge:

“In so far as Affection is Need-love he is half-crazy with it. Unless, in his own way, he loved his daughters he would not so desperately desire their love.” (41)

Lear was mad because he didn’t love his daughters with the love of storge. We see warped storge all around us; people struggling to feel loved and to love in return. It can make people selfish. It can make them narcissistic. It can make them force pledges of fealty and competition over who loves most or simpers best. It can make them vulnerable to talented liars and manipulators and unable to make clear, rational decisions. (I’m talking about King Lear, of course.) But how powerful can storge be if wielded for good? In his 2006 book The Road, Cormac McCarthy wrote an unflinching portrayal of storge that painted it in all its colors of grit and glory:

“He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.” (McCarthy 5)

The protagonist, known only as the Man, is responsible for protecting his son through a hopeless post-apocalyptic landscape of misery, starvation, and constant danger. McCarthy gets to the heart of storge as an act of salvation; it won't save physical bodies, but it saves something deeper and far more precious: our humanity.

Throughout the course of The Road, the Man routinely sacrifices his own needs, willingly growing weaker in favor of doing everything he can to ensure his son’s needs are met. Yet as the Boy grows, the Man's concerns evolve beyond the immediate physical requirements to higher-level needs, like protecting the Boy’s innocence and goodness. The Boy is preoccupied with the notion of Good Guys and Bad Guys, and the Man goes to great lengths to indemnify the Good Guy image his son projects onto them both. When the Boy is attacked, the Man kills the attacker, shaking the Boy’s worldview:

You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand?
Yes.
He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said.
Yes. We're still the good guys.
And we always will be.
Yes. We always will be. (65)

The Man unthinkingly sacrifices his own morality for the sake of allowing the Boy to retain his. He invokes God, showing the Boy that the love he feels for him is sacred. This, I think, is what is meant by storge; it’s a compass for how we orient to the world. For most people, it’s the first encounter they ever have with love. Even for people for whom storge is missing completely, it still informs every relationship they have for the rest of their lives. Think about children abandoned in orphanages who are not exposed to storge. The circuitry in their brains is compromised and vision, language, and emotional development are delayed or irreparably broken.3 Some of these children never develop appropriately, even when exposed to storge later in their lives. Storge is a crucial love, primal and elementary, and our individual physical and emotional development depends on it. It’s a beautiful mass inoculation against savagery. The basis of civilization depends upon it.

The parent-child relationship is one manifestation of storge, but if it is truly the foundational, nourishing love of humanity, in what other relationships can it be cultivated? In my own life, I’ve experienced storge strongly with my own children, but I also feel it for my younger sister, with whom I share an eight-year age gap. I still feel intensely tender and protective of her even though she’s now a confident, well-adjusted adult. I’ve experienced something like storge with some of the teachers I was lucky enough to have in my student days. I’ve felt it with pets. Each encounter I’ve had with storge has left me a better, happier, kinder person; if that’s true for everyone, then storge makes the whole world a better, happier, kinder place.

Where do you witness the deep affection of storge? I’m curious to hear about where you encounter it in fiction and in your own life. Please share in the comments below and let’s get to work on planting seeds of storge wherever we can.

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Notes:

Image Credit: Love by Mauricio A. is licensed under CC0 Creative Commons.

1)      Lewis, C.S. “Affection.” The Four Loves. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1991.
2)      McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage International, 2006.
3)      Hamilton, Jon. “Orphans' Lonely Beginnings Reveal How Parents Shape A Child's Brain.” NPR, 24 Feb. 2014, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/02/20/280237833/orphans-lonely-beginnings-reveal-how-parents-shape-a-childs-brain.