Childhoodtake2!

Every Friday we unite for five minutes to write on one word. Only five minutes, that's all we get, that's all we have. And then, right where we are, no edits or second-thoughts, we publish those words. This week, we write on steady.
Go.

I am not the steady one of the group.
I am not the rock.
That's your job.
You were my joy, my constant, my always and forever.
Still now, as the waves of life crash down on us and make us nauseous
you are steady.
You are the calm in our storm.
You are the one that keeps us steady.

The push and pull of life has me very unsteady these days.
The stress and worry has me shaking and unstable.
I am a tightly wound ball of nerves and balls are not steady, balls wobble, balls roll.
You are my steady.
You are my reminder that this too shall pass and more crazy will come.
You are my whisper of find us, we are here.
You are my fixer of all things, you are my steady.

And the attraction started because of your constant joy.
The natural joy that lived in you.
I didn't realize someone could feel that way, all of the time.
You were so thrilled to be.
Happy to be doing anything, as long as we were together.
Which is why dating me is still your favorite.
Which is why you look forward to just us two.

Kids knock you down.
Jobs, careers, business, they drag you through the mud.
Homes offer retreat and worry.
Life is full of the swinging back and forth
it is what makes life worth living.
And every person that gets lost in the whirl
every person that almost gets hurt from the spinning needs a steady rock.
A place to steady their thoughts.
A place to steady their mind.
A place to steady.
You, you are my steady.
You are my always and forever.

Stop.

"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start right now." —Harry Burns, When Harry Met Sally...

March 16th 2005.
Not a special day or night.
If anything, it was the opposite.
I had a rough day,
you had a different idea of how to turn it around.

All these years, I have thought of our proposal as "not a great story".
There was very little romance,
very little planning,
all,
100% all us.

And then, someone I know through my daughter's old school lost his bride.
Lost the love of his life.
And I have been following his journey of healing and of trying to live on without her.
And on their last anniversary, he wrote about the day he proposed.
How excited he was, how nervous, how anxious.
And as he was down on one knee, they both realized that he was standing next to a dumpster.
And they laughed hard about this moment.
And then he quoted one of my favorite lines in one of my favorite movies
"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start right now."

All of these years, that is what you have been trying to say.
All of these years when I tell our story, I shoot you a look.
A look that says, it was kind of a mess.
A look that says I thought you were kidding.
A look that says I was so upset.
A look that says I thought you were just trying to make me laugh.
A look that says I misread the whole situation.
A look that says you tried so hard to convince me.
A look that says it wasn't planned.
A look that says it was thrown together.
You have tried and tried to put that exact wording together.
You have said things like, the ring was burning a hole in my pocket.
I just needed to get it out,
it didn't matter that you were having a bad day
it didn't matter that I didn't have it planned
it didn't matter that it was thrown at you
I just needed to ask you because
"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start right now."

And it took this, it took me reading the words of a man who lost what we have for me to finally hear you.
"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start right now."

We have been through the easy
the it is just so easy to love you
you just make me a better person.
We have been through the horrible...
doctors visits that make you think, how can this be happening?
jobs and finding careers
fear of no money.
All of it, easy times to love, easy to count on each other.
We have been through the everyday of love.
Which means we have been through the hard
of careers
and homes
and living in chaos
and worry
and raising tiny humans
aging parents
and circumstances
and tiring moments
and exhaustion.
But, we always come home.

I have told you how our love is like a compass.
How it leads us back to our home.
Where we belong.
So we can spend the rest of our lives
together.

Yes, I would say yes all over again.
Yes, even knowing what is ahead.
Yes, I still love you, more than when it was easy
or horrible.
Yes, I will always pick you
so thanks for asking me.

Every Friday we unite for five minutes. Only five minutes, that's all we get, that's all we have. And then, right where we are, no edits or second-thoughts, we publish those words. This week, we write on world.
Go.

I was 21 when my world changed.
When I met him.
When it all started making sense and life was normal and filled with smiles and happy.
When he reminded me what joy was, what comfort was, what love can do.
When he made me go back home, find my family, forgive those that will never say sorry.
At 23, my world changed again.
A scary diagnosis does that, it doesn't matter if you are young or old, a diagnosis will rock and shatter your world.
And that is where love steps in again, to always fix the broken.
We were 30 when we had her and 33 when we had him,
and our world changed again.
For the good, yes.
For the more difficult, yes.
Harder now, yes.
More difficult to connect, and find the loving moments, yes.
More difficult to remember to hold hands, remember to look at each other when you're mad, to find each other again,
yes.
More difficult to remember that if you do this right, they leave, but he will forever be my best friend, my partner, side by side,
yes.
But we will continue to find each other in parenthood.
To not only trace their start,
but our start too.
Because it is so easy to love in the happy and even easier to love in the sad,
it's all the in between that you fight for.
All the mundane, all the garbage.
The paying of the bills, and house projects, and mowing of the lawn.
That's where you fight for each other.
Because we have weathered storms,
we have found our normal in the chaos
and we are each other's world.

Stop.