A very smelly dog who hasn't had a bath yet is lying almost entirely on my pillow as my husband sleeps, oblivious. The stitches from her surgery haven't come out yet, so we haven't been able to give her a much-needed bath.
Exasperated, I kiss the dog on the head and shake my husband awake. "You want to move the dog?" I ask. "If you're going to let her stink up the bed, let it be on your side."
For a moment I think "He's lucky I love him." It only takes a moment or two for me to remember that I'm pretty lucky he loves me.
Sometimes its something powerful that causes you to consider the depth of your feelings for someone; other times its the mundane. Considering how often we annoy the shit out of each other, its amazing we remember at all. But remember we do.
The other day I'm sitting in the living room quietly minding my own business and he feels the need to come in, change the channel to some band I've never heard of doing a live concert and then turn the volume waaayyyyyy up.
Annoyed, I gather my things and change rooms, grumbling the whole way about how I live here too, you know, and not everyone wants to listen to music all the time. Then again, its likely he feels the same way about my tendency to try on every outfit I own and leave all the stuff I decided against piled up in the middle of the bed for him to deal with after I leave for work, or to wake him up at 5:00 in the morning because I something large and furry went scurrying when I opened the garage door and I needed him to prove it was a kitten and not a rat. And he even went along with me when I suggested that if it was actually a kitten we should probably start feeding it.
This morning I'm putting on my makeup and he comes and leans against the bathroom doorjamb, watching.
"Why do you watch this?" I ask. "How am I supposed to maintain any sense of mystery? Not that there's a lot left to the imagination at this point..."
"A woman's personality is always a source of mystery" he says, laughing and kissing me.
I am lucky that my dear husband is a forgiving sort of fellow, he likewise that I am a woman inclined to seek the good. We're both old enough to be at peace with our respective faults, which makes it far easier to accept them in others. When I finally reached a point in my life where my self-love was greater than my self-loathing, that's when I met the person who could love me as I am. Perhaps the fact that I had come to accept and even at times celebrate my own strengths and acknowledge and forgive my own weaknesses made it easier for someone else to come along and love me too.
Even though life is busy and like most people I invest too much of my time and energy slogging through the daily grind of work, chores and bills, there are times on my long commute that I turn off the radio and pay attention. Driving through the frozen desert and the stubbled, winter-barren crop circles, I reflect on the mystery of us and one more time am humbled by just how lucky I am, at this stage in my life, to know this kind of love.
I would marry this man again in a heartbeat. Yes, I would.
