Great loves come in all forms.

When you’re little there’s no doubt a teddy bear (for me it was Big Ted) or a family pet who was your BFF (best fuzzy/furry friend). For me that was Rufus – our beloved family border collie.

Great loves – although they feel a lot like love – tend to take the form of great crushes when you are in your early teens. The kind of love you feel like you could just die for – the boy in your geography class who doesn’t know your name, but you’ve signed your first name and his last all over a page in your notebook … just to see what it is going to look like. The lead singer (or drummer or bass guitarist) of a band. Or maybe even every member of that boy band you just can’t get enough of, because you just can’t decide who you love more?

As you grow older, if you are lucky, you will find someone in this world who loves you for the person you are, warts and all. The person who will whisper in your ear and tell you how beautiful you look when you’re dressed up – or when you’re in your pyjamas. A person who will love you with their whole heart and soul when you’re at your highest or lowest. Who will applaud and encourage you, hold you while you cry, and (if you’re a girl with long hair!) hold your hair back when you’re sick. I have been lucky enough to have experienced that kind of love a couple of times, and for that I’m grateful.

I’m looking forward to having it again.

I always thought that being a parent would bring me love and happiness, but I don’t honestly think I was prepared for the wind-knocked-out-of-me kind of great love that it really is. And just when I think it can’t get any better, or any more amazing, or that there couldn’t possibly be any more room in my heart for more love – BAM – it hits me again.

Yesterday Bubba and I went for a visit to grandma’s house. Grandma keeps teddy bears from our childhood (both mine and my sister’s) at her house. When puppies came into our lives (more great loves, of the 4-legged variety) we decided grandma’s house was the safest place for our childhood great loves. The alternative wasn’t worth thinking about.

Bubba has taken to crawling into small spaces like the bottom of bookshelves, the bottom of her wardrobe. I think it’s probably the start of cubby houses and building forts and castles out of the couch cushions and sheets! She sometimes takes things with her, other times she plays with whatever she finds when she gets there.

Yesterday, when grandma opened the wardrobe door where the teddy bears currently reside, Bubba climbed in and two of my great loves collided.

My Big Ted (who is older than me and used to be soft pink and white, but discoloured over many many years of playing, washing, too many tears over boys who weren’t worthy – and a couple who probably were, and even a facelift) and my Bubba. Snuggled up together in their own little cubby house.

I’m not sure my heart can stand it!