Romantic Interlude

I’m home alone for the week (well, alone with my little bobbles). Tony is camping with the Boy Scouts. It’s strange to be missing my other half. Neither of us works outside our home, nor do we have many other separate activities. We mostly spend all day every day together. He works some on the computer, and I cook or blog or nurse children to sleep, but we’re rarely more than a room away from one another.

I’m sorry if this entry turns out a bit sappy. I can feel it heading in that direction. You can stop reading now if you can’t stand kissing scenes, and come back on a different day when I feel like ranting about bureaocracy or describing my latest encounter with raw milk. I always believed in soul-mates. At least I always wanted to believe, because I wanted one. I sighed over Plato’s Symposium in philosophy class. I read Rumi unabashedly literally. I memorized Rosetti’s “The Birth-Bond.”

When I met Tony, he didn’t strike me as a soul-mate. Handsome, funny, athletic, even romantic, yes. But a soul-mate? No. We had opposite tastes in books and movies. He played video games. His favorite restaurants were Panda Express, Taco Bell, and In-N-Out (yes, that last made it into our first date).

Somehow, though, easily, I fell in love with him. We were married within six months. We didn’t know each other really, but we know there was something that drew us together. Now, five years later, we find ourselves finishing each other’s sentences and sharing just the same particular fantasy about a little house in the French countryside, but close enough to spend the weekend in Paris.

What do I love about him? Everything. I love his sincere eyes, his gentle hands, the poetry he secretly commits to memory for me. I love the shape of him in the dark, watching me in his mind’s eye. I love seeing him unfold as a father. I love his way of putting everyone at ease. I love his singular commitment to the things he values. I love his passion for music and cheese and me.

I always hoped, and even thought that this would happen, but somehow I find myself surprised that I did. Surprised by love. Surprised by the sheer everyday richness of it all.

The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you,
not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.
– Rumi