My friend is a single social worker, and she decided not to wait around to find the perfect father, she just set out to foster a baby, and so far she’s keeping the current six-month-old. I think there was at least one other baby before this, because everyone agrees the best thing is for kids to be with their parents most of the time. She’s hopeful, though.

We were waiting together for the bus last night, my friend, her baby, and me, and she said she didn’t know whether she could keep the baby, or whether the mother or the grandmother would end up with her. Either way, she would stay in touch, she said. She loves the baby so much, she said.

I told her something I don’t usually tell people, which is, “Either way, you get to love her. It’s a gift to be able to love someone. I went into teaching so I could love my students.”

Unlike many of my friends, I did have a baby, and then I really didn’t want another. I even flirted with the idea of getting my tubes tied, and couldn’t go through with it in the end because I was only in my thirties and I had the terrible thought that my baby might die. I was one of the lucky people who falls in love with their baby, though, and I found out then out how wonderful that is.

I know many people don’t really love their kids, believe me. I really don’t think a lot of people should have children at all; my parents probably shouldn’t have, for instance, especially my father. My mother probably should have waited until she had the career she wanted. None of that was an option for them.

But being able to love someone else is a gift from the Universe, and I picked a good career. In fact, I loved most of my students, over the course of nearly thirty years of teaching every grade from pre-kindergarten through college. I cared deeply about those kids. I wanted them to succeed. I thought they were funny and bright, all of them, and I was grateful that I could walk along with them and be part of their journey.

And then I got to let them go, and boy that was great, too. There is nothing like getting to the end of my time with them and saying to myself, “They’re not my problem any more.”

I’m still in love with my kid, mind you. My adult kid is possibly the coolest and smartest and kindest person in the universe, and even their so-called flaws are virtues, just so you know that about me. And I adore my grandchild, and spoil him. But everyone else? They are not my problem.

I feel kind of like that with my husband, who died three years ago. I was madly in love with him. I couldn’t imagine marrying anyone else. We were married for 46 years. I saw him through the terrible end of his life until his death from a particularly nasty cancer. It was a great privilege to love that difficult, funny, kind, angry, silly, generous man. And here I am, and he’s not my problem any more, except sometimes when I cry about how sad his illness was.

So there you have it. “Love is All You Need,” right? Like the absolutely awful beliefs of my friends who took too many hallucinogens and started doing Tibetan chants in the late 60s. But love doesn’t overcome all, and it’s not the answer, and if you love people war doesn’t end and disease doesn’t stop killing people.

No, love is just a really good thing, worth being able to feel, whether or not it’s returned. I’m not selfless, and I’m not sentimental. I’m selfish as hell.