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.

Eighteen Years

I have been married to my beautiful wife for eighteen years.

We went into this thing with our eyes open. Before we married, we dated for four years, most of which was at a distance. Me in Cleveland, she in Buffalo. Eight hours on the road, twenty to forty hours of togetherness. Every weekend, on our best behavior.

I know it doesn't sound romantic - and that's okay. Our courtship wasn't entirely romantic. It was a conscious decision for us to each change a little to accommodate the other and for us to both work at forging a lasting relationship. What sounds so cold, so calculated, has resulted in our lives intertwined.

At dinner last night I asked my wife if our marriage was what she expected. She said many nice things to that, but the overall message was that we were closer now than the day we were married. That is true. The negative way to put that is that we take each other for granted - but the beautiful thing is that we can. If one stumbles, the other is there to catch. Without question. Without hesitation. With nothing in our hearts for one another except love.

Our love is now like an old shoe or pair of jeans. Broken in, but not broken. Soft. Comfortable. Eighteen years ago, I did not imagine this. Our life together has been a pleasant surprise.

Rainbow

"Come here. Quick!"

It was my wife, calling from the front door. Outside, the sky was an odd orange/yellow/pink color. A rainbow, a complete 180-degree arc, stretched over the tree line to the east. It was, quite frankly, odd.

I know that looks like a badly-rendered photo - but it's not. The sky was actually that color and gave everything a surreal look.

Times like these, I wonder where my wonder went. I used to lie on the grass, just gazing at clouds, passing aircraft, the bird bellies. At night, I would go outside and just look at the stars. Once, I saw a satellite pass overhead.

Tonight, like most nights, I'm in my office on my computer.

I wonder what I'm missing outside my window. Oddly, I don't wonder enough to get up and look.

Boston to Bar Harbor Trip

Not the best vacation, not the worst. All in all, it was a well-executed vacation, performed with adequate precision.

We started in Boston, a place where my wife and I had been years ago on our honeymoon. I had since visited a couple times on business. But this was a new city for our children and my daughter is interested in American history, so we spent a couple days there. The first day after our travel, we walked Boston then rode the Ducks to get a different perspective. It was a bit rushed but we covered some highlights from America's early history.

The next day we went to Clara Barton's Birthplace and Old Sturbridge Village for a piece of history a little later in America (1820 - 1840, on the cusp of the Industrial Age). We followed that with an excursion to Plymouth and dinner in Salem to soak in a bit of pre-USA history.

We left Boston for Bar Harbor, but we didn't leave learning behind. At Bar Harbor one of the first things we did was go on the Lulu - a lobster boat tour of the bays outside Bar Harbor. There we learned all about lobster and lobstering, saw seals and lighthouses, and pulled up a couple traps.

Following that, we headed into Acadia. There we drove to the summit of Cadillac Mountain and skirted the shores of Mount Desert Island. It was gorgeous. That evening was our last chance to unwind on the rocky Maine coast before heading back to Boston and back home.

The evening before our flight home, we explored Cambridge before and after dinner. At least, as best we could from the car, in the rain, without either a plan or a clue.