him

March 7th, 2011

This is the man I love.

His name is Tim. He said I could tell you that.

When I was a teenager, lying on the floor of my friend’s bedrooms, starting wistfully at NKOTB posters, dreaming of my future husband, he is not the man I imagined. He has the dark hair, piercing eyes and flirty way that always charmed me but in most other respects, he is different than I expected.

All of those midnight’s spent conjuring up a fictional future were dreams of a white dress, of grand gestures and perfect moments. I imagined poems & songs written for me, a life of ease and near constant bliss. In my youth, I couldn’t conceive of what 15 years of life together would look like. I had no idea how beautiful and sometimes, how desperately ugly our life would be. There was a white dress, a few grand gestures and many perfect moments. But even those moments, most cherished in my heart look differently than I imagined. I treasure my mental images of our heads thrown back, laughing until we cried (or I peed my pants!), tender words whispered in the dark & dreams, long imagined coming to be. But they also include tears, slippery babies still wet from my womb (and then nights, long nights holding those babies), laughter at things only we could understand, raw, vulnerable moments when I bared my soul and he looked into my eyes and kept right on loving me. Moments where we raged and ranted until we were bleary eyed and hoarse but chose to keep on. Days we didn’t know how we were going to do tomorrow but still said yes to our future and to the promises of the past. Those are the moments I hold most closely in my heart and the times I am most proud of us. Those are the things I could not image when I was fifteen.

I had no idea how he would become my rock. How the flirty guy with the bluest eyes would become a man of great strength and character. How leaning into him, breathing in the scent of him and listening to his heart beat would steady me. How I would long for his presence. How completely entwined the threads of our lives would become as years passed and babies were born, homes bought and sold, jobs lost and businesses started. How he would love me and hurt me and change me and more than anything, make me proud to be his wife and share his name.

Not every day is perfect. In fact, very few are. He’s never written me a song and our life is more chaotic than blissful but I am thankful for it. Grateful to the core of my being. I have a love that has become a rarity.

I love you Tim- then, now, always.