Clocking Time

Right now, my thoughts are nine months ahead of me. I'm thinking about our vacation plans for the summer. Jackson, WY. Yellowstone. Grand Tetons. Midwestern boy playing cowboy for a week.

There's a tinge of worry, fraying at the edges of my dreams. Money. Soffits this spring, furnace this fall, wife looking for work - money is a worry. Not that we won't have it. No. The worry is that we won't spend it. That I will feel guilty with every dollar spent on frivolity. Just like the fear that my son will misbehave, it's probably misplaced.

Dammit, though. It doesn't do much to weaken my vision of what could be a wonderful vacation. As good as any we've had with or without the kids. Right now, I'm clocking time. My heart is nine months hence. Waiting.

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.