He Loves Me So Well

Somewhere in the midst of a thousand and two days in a relationship the frenetic skipping of your heart slows down to a steady reliable beat.  And if you're lucky and smart enough to realize what an authentic and true relationship entails, instead of turning away from the steady ba-bump, ba-bump you lean in and embrace it, succumb towards the real and eventually promise each other forever.

Romance becomes not a whirlwind any longer.  Flowers eventually perish, their withered endings turning back into the soil and changing into something perhaps less delicate but more finite from within other organisms will root themselves, blooming again.

Romance and the ways to show love will move beyond gifts, beyond rhapsodic declarations and roaring emotions, morphing into subtle loving nuances within the everyday.

The trick to the success of knowing when and what you have is good is in the realization of all these small sometimes unrecognizable moments that are strung together with a sinewy texture and sepia tones.

You can find them in morning when you wake up to a hot cup of coffee on your bedside table or when you're laying in bed with the children between you and he reaches for your hand after brushing back the damp after bath hair from their heads.  It's in the moments when you finally put them to bed and curl up together watching your favourite show and you promise each other to always lay just this way ... even when your 94.  It's in the way he touches the small of your back as you walk in front of him or in making their favourite meal just because.  It's in the way he looks at you when you watch your children play together as if to say, "we make awesome kids...man how did we get so lucky?" It's there in his lips that linger a second longer before you lay your heads back down wearily for the night.  It's in him knowing exactly what is going to come out of your mouth before it leaves your lips.  It's in the way he can bring you up from a hard day simply with his embrace.  It's in the way you've promise to always be a team and to show your children what a good, healthy marriage looks like.  It's in the wine soaked nights laying side by side on your back deck in the midnight hour after friends stumble away leaving you listening to your wedding song.

It's in all of that and so much more.

And if you're really, really lucky, it's in the surprise weekend away that he planned for your 7 year wedding anniversary.

But within all of that, the layers of 13 years that brought job changes, moving cities, travels, illness, injuries, family deaths, marriage and children...the most sacred thing to do for the most important person in your life is to love them well.

So thank you, John, for loving me so well.

Happy Anniversary love.

How did we get so lucky? 

June 10, 2006

....and 7 years later.