Lucky Man

I love my wife.

No. Really. Take a pause and let that sink in.

I am head-over-heals in love with my wife.

We've known each other for decades, now. We are comfortable with one another - able to finish each others' sentences. We laugh at the same stupid stuff (today is was the old Purina Cat Chow commercials with the cat dancing to chow-chow-chow). We know and accept the other's foibles.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I don't mean that feeling of togetherness that comes from being together. I don't mean that flutter of the heart one gets when reunited. I mean that feeling you get when you just love another person to the point of almost physical pain. That love where, if you could, you'd wipe the board clean and do nothing but spend every available moment in each other's arms.

I don't know why I feel this way - I don't always. I just wish the kids would go to bed (yes, it's the middle of the afternoon) so my wife and I could spend hours together.

Life goes on. Dinner gets cooked, beds get made, shows get watched. That overwhelming love gets put in a box and shoved into the closet. But it's there. And it comes out, all by itself, and doesn't care whether it's convenient. I am an incredibly lucky man, because I love my wife.

Inflection Point

Have I hit one of life's inflection points, or have I just strung together a couple bad weeks? When you're in the midst of things, it can be hard to tell. It feels that way, to me. It feels like things are going downhill, as a prelude to another upswing. Maybe. You see, when things are going to shit you can't really smell the roses. You just imagine them behind the next pile of shit.

There's no way to short-circuit the process. There's no good vantage to gain to see the future with any useful clarity. It could be just wishful thinking - oh, I haven't ruled that out - but my history is one of peaks and valleys and, thus far, every valley has been followed by a mountain.

As they say, past performance is not indicative of future gains - but that's all the information I have to work with.