My love song.

Your favorite love song is crap.

I don't know what your favorite love song is, obviously, and I'm sure it's nice and all. I'm sure you like it just fine, and I get that, I really do, because there are more than a few radio-friendly love songs that I enjoy myself.

But here's the thing. Your favorite love song gets as much right about real love as Bug would get on a multiple choice trigonometry quiz.

Would you like to know what love sounds like? Because here's a hint: it doesn't sound anything like Rascal Flatts or Taylor Swift or Disney soundtracks or whatever you think it should sound like.

My love song is the sound of him coming through the front door in the evening. I know it like I know the sound of my name, the way the glass door creaks open, his key scrapes its way into the lock and the deadbolt pops open. The squeak of the mailbox top opening, and the way the air whistles out of the spring on the glass door while it bounces once and clicks closed behind him. Creak scrape pop squeak whoosh click. That's my love song.

There's another song, too. It sounds like too much tickling and peals of laughter, and it comes through the baby monitor at night. I sit on the couch in the basement with Mr. Baggins folded in my lap and watch him swallow gulp after gulp from the last bottle of the night, and we both listen to the sounds of Daddy finishing bedtime. The song is longer than it should be, with long instrumental sections that sound suspiciously like games of peek-a-boo, and eventually winds down into whispered prayers and puckered lips.

My love song sounds like diaper changes and grocery shopping and lawn mowing. My song has a washing machine swirling away in the back ground, and my song is punctuated by cheers for touchdowns and three point shots on the television. My love song is the sound of him sweeping the Fruit Loops off his side of the bed before climbing in next to me with a low chuckle. My love song is the sound of the life we have built together--the good, the bad, and the screaming from the Time-Out chair.

Take that, Celine Dion.