As it happens, today is also my wedding anniversary. Today, we have been married 12 years, (after living in sin for 10 or so). If anyone had ever asked me, (and no one did) I would have said that Valentines Day was nothing special,.....just another day to spend money on cards and candies. My first husband, the one that I played house with before I grew up and became a real grown-up wife, used to tell me the same thing...."Lori, it's not a REAL holiday" I believed him. Actually, I believed everything he told me.....
I miss him. This guy who taught me so much ABOUT so much. No Valentine's entry would be complete without me wishing him my love and my admiration. "Hey there, you up in heaven...Happy Valentine's Day....I am thinking of you down here..thank you,...thank you, Glenn for being who you were" And I do miss him. I miss the way he made me feel,.....like I was eternally 19...I miss his often "strange" perspective on everyday things,.....I miss his long discourses and treatises on everything from growing tomatoes to growing children, from the state of the economy to the state of Alaska. (Remember, we were once going to move there).
You with your far-out ideas and unique vision of how life could be.... set me on a path to my own uniquity......a path that has grown and challenged me along the way. Yep, I owe you all of that, my dear friend.
On Valentines Day, I want to thank you for my children....our children,....yours, mine, and Michael's....OUR children. But mostly, today, I want to thank you for Michael, for your crazy, lopsided plan to bring us together.
It was love that brought us together, you and I....It was love that held us together, when all of the world around us was falling apart. But mostly, it was your love that surrendered me to another love, a different love,.....a grown-up, take care of you, grow old together, kind of love. I remember that day at the kitchen table when you told me you had the "perfect man" for me....I laughed, bitterly,...thinking to myself that you would go to almost any lengths to hurt me.
Now, here we are....some 22 years later.....You were right. Michael is the perfect man for me. He loves who I am, not who I was....He challenges me to be all of the things that he knows I am capable of...and he loves me enough to remind me, over and over again. He loves me like a man should love his wife...with everything that he is...he loves me with laughter and humor,....he loves me with adventure and with down-to-earth, everyday, count on you kind of love. In him and through him and with him, I've flourished....I love him in ways I could never imagine. He is my grown-up hero. He is my rock, and my confidante, my playmate and conspirator, my best friend.
You.....you were my muse.
If marriages are like meals, (and I guess they are in a sense. A good marriage nourishes and fortifies us, and a bad marriage is just junk food) then my marriage is like a fine french meal. It takes it's time, meandering though appetizers, savory little morsels that tempt you for more...It's fresh and it's healthy, and there is just enough decadence to leave you feeling sated and full,....pampered. And just when you think you can't eat one more bite, there is always a dessert....something dark and rich yet light. Michael, you are my chocolate mousse.
Valentine's Day is a real holiday. It's the day I marked my new love, the day we chose to become one. And when I look up and remember Glenn, I know it's real.
"Hey up there, Cupid...thanks,...thank YOU" You know who you are!
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