Playing for Time

I’ve been blogging on WordPress for a week now and haven’t really said much about my husband, so today is his day.  I have to be careful when I talk about him because I can easily take it right over the top.  We found each other late, we’ve only been married eight years, we’re so compatible it’s ridiculous, and we’re annoyingly goofy.  I think he’s hilarious … and smokin’ hot.  I haven’t really found anything he can’t do.  And he loves me.

I met Kim at church when a friend recruited him to play bass guitar in our band.  Since I play keyboards we instantly had something in common, but nine months went by before we had an actual conversation.  I’d recently lost my husband, my father-in-law, and my dad in a hellish eight-month stretch and I wasn’t speaking to men at the time.

Anyway … I sort of got over my unspoken vow not to talk to anyone of the male persuasion ever again, and we finally had a chat.  Until 4:30 in the morning.  He came to a program I was in two nights later … and followed me home two days after that and cooked Easter dinner for me … and we decided we were getting married … and three months later, we did.  If you’ve read my “About” page, you may have noticed the word “fairytale” … it’s an understatement.

So now we’re into the Happily Ever After part of the story.  I get to live with a man who treats me like the proverbial queen, not only does all the cooking but the shopping and clean-up as well, brings me coffee in bed, makes me laugh like a demented person, plays heart-melting guitar, writes music, reads voraciously, knows how to build things and fix things, how to clean a house like the former Navy man that he is, and loves my son like his own.  And he kisses even better than he cooks.

The really wonderful thing is how he lets me be me in every way.  He encourages my interests and talents, isn’t jealous of the time I spend on the things I love, and nurtures me on the days when pain wins for a while.  He listens to me babble when I get excited about cool things that happen … and knows how to make me think he’s actually hearing everything I say.

My husband isn’t perfect.  Neither am I, not even close.  But we’ve both lived other lives and we’ve had time and opportunity to learn that not everything in life matters equally.  Some things are better left unsaid.  Most negatives, when balanced against the incredible positives, are not even worth thinking about.  As he often says, “You have to know when to be satisfied.  You have to give yourself permission to be happy.”

I’ve made my share of mistakes in life, but I can’t help thinking that Kim is payback for something I managed to get right.