By his choice I don't write much about PHF. I used to ask him why he doesn't leave me comments on my blog or read it much, and he said, "Well, I could do that. Or, I could just walk into the study and talk to you." I guess comments would be romantic, but truly, I don't care about that shit much.
We're not much for romance, he and I. Not many greeting cards pass between us. His favorite one-liner is to show me a card at the grocery and say, "This is the card I would have gotten you..." We don't do flowers too often either. Lest you think we are completely cold toward each other, we do occassionally impromptu-gift each other, and we often out-do ourselves at Christmas. But we aren't very physically demonstrative toward each other, from the time we first went out. I would venture to say that many of our friends have never even seen us kiss. We tend to give each other shit a lot, and sometimes I wonder if people who don't know us well think we don't like each other much.
He bitches about inconsequential things like traffic, which I hate, and he sometimes gets crabby on Sundays. He loves to talk about cars, think about cars, watch tv shows about cars, and spend money on cars, which I don't care much for. We've had our knock-down-drag-out moments, of course.
But I have never once considered trying to live my life without him, and I know he hasn't either.
Because...
We can't shut up at movies. If we're sitting together, anywhere actually, we're usually talking. When we're in bed together I have this compulsion to touch him. At night, even though we both sleep hot, he rarely complains when I press my hip or leg against him. He travels a lot, and he's frantically busy when he does. But he calls me often, just for a minute, just to say hi. We rarely part without saying I love you--even if it's to run an errand. He kisses me goodbye when he goes down to work in the basement. Just a note on the fridge will say, "Get eggs. Love, me."
Though hospitals make him queasy, he was steady as a rock through the frightening, painful, gruesome procedure to remove my blood clot and my two Caesarians. I saw my children's faces through his eyes first, which felt right. I was drugged up for the surgeries, so his tears at their births gave me a memory of the magnitude of the event. In the years to follow, I found him to be the best parent I know. When he is with the kids he is truly with them, and he is a bottomless well of compassion and love.
He puts up with me: my loud music, my absent-minded neglect, my constant, fashionable lateness, and my sour moods when I don't get to write. He tolerates my immediacy of concern over my fictional friends. He might not understand, but he knows that they are real to me. He gracefully accepts my affinity for flirting with other men, my close friendship with Greg, and my need for time spent alone.
We met at a party at his fraternity, both of us on dates with other people. I was on a blind date which had served its purpose of getting me to the party with my friends, and he was on the final date of a fading relationship. I never saw her--he took her home early. Then he came back and proceded to get shitfaced. He asked me to dance with him, Madonna Crazy for You, right after I'd declined my date's offer to dance. He held me like he had found his home after a long trip abroad, and he kissed me at the end of the song.
I asked later him if he recalled dancing and kissing me, and he gave me this smile, sort of sheepish and shy, and said, "Yeah. It's really the only thing I remember from that night." He recalled my first name only, but he tracked me down and called me by the following Monday.
It might have taken me a whole five minutes to fall in love with him, even though I wasn't really ready for it and even though he was a math/science geek. We made a cute couple; our hair is the same color. And hot, man, was he hot. Still is. Women tell me that he's attractive and I feel this dopey grin spreading across my face. I'm suddenly a teenager in love again.
He's the most brilliant and principled person I know. There is a profound comprehension which lingers within him, deeply hidden most of the time. It's an honor to be close enough to him to witness its emergence. I love to hear him talk to me, though I don't show it enough. He sometimes talks me to sleep when I need it. His voice is the most comforting and most exciting sound in the world to me. When one of my characters, Jason, talks--even though he's got a British accent--it's my husband's voice I hear in my head.
We met on September 13. As of today, I have known my husband half my life: the better half spent with my better half. We'll eat Mexican, cuz that's what we always do.
I love you, honey.
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