Thirty six years on Monday - that means the old man and I have known each other a bit over 37 years. There are few who have known or cared for me any longer. I am always a bit sentimental this time of year and cannot resist looking backwards at the trail of life behind me.
My mind is flooded with memories and the images are of skinnier days and laughing girls and my wonderful Hero Honey who wrapped my life and limbs in his. I love this man and am grateful and consider myself lucky that God let me blindly stumble into that relationship.
The first time he remembers seeing me was at TCU. He was visiting a mutual friend and I was bounding across a field between the Music Building and my dorm, racing to tell the mutual friend the news about the choir list and who didn't make it. He thought I was a funny little thing, racing across campus and hollering about something nonsensical. But he actually saw me 3 months earlier, when our eyes met, I felt a jolt, and I knew he was going to be mine.
It is funny how I knew that and it stayed with me. Though he will tell you I did, I did NOT ask him to marry me. I didn't have to coerce him. He fell for me too, but I think it was not until he heard me sing that he lost his independence, in March the following spring. He says he sat there and couldn't believe that sound came from that little girl and he was sold.
I know you know this history, you who have known and shared all my inner thoughts. But I keep coming back to this thread that runs through my life. The enchantment of finding someone with whom you can laugh, and scream, love and hate, and still stay tethered by that magical bond that reasserts and reinvents itself, stronger each time, still amazes me. We have the most incredible ability to talk and study and together manage to comprehend the changes that life presents - our babies, their childhood, teenagers, young women, young mothers, his retirement, my insanity, and of course the electronic age!
Too, I have decided that what really exists between us is not magic but our mutual determination that what we have is worth repeating, and saving, and recommitting on a regular basis. It is not hard to stay together - the magic reasserts itself periodically because we want to have magic. It is a stronger drug than any we could ingest or smoke or guzzle. There is no feeling like reaching this height of the mountain and realizing that you have a partner who knows when and where you are going to stumble and is willing to push-pull you up the path.
I love you, Mikey, in all that that encompasses. That word is all I can say and it is NEVER enough.
1 comment:
The word Mikey??
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