For My Own Sake

"I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else." ~ John Keats

This quote from a love letter written by poet John Keats has been rolling around in my head the last couple of weeks.  I get it - the kind of love he is talking about.  To be loved just for who you are, not for what you do, or what you look like, or how you contribute, but just because you are, is a treasure. 

The more I thought about it the more I think this is how grandchildren and grandparents love each other.  I know that is how I feel about my sweet little grandsons, and also how I feel about my own Grandmothers.  It is a fierce and illogical attachment.  I love them just for their own existence.  Nothing can change that and nothing can top that.

I have been looking for the perfect image to express this thought, and finally found it.  I don't know who to thank for taking this picture of my Grandma T holding me when I was just a tiny girl.  They captured that look on her face that I now recognize as the way a grandmother feels about her grandchild - pure and total love.