Look before you Leap

Fifteen years ago today I made the single best choice of my life. 

We were young - so young.

We had so many big dreams (and so few actual plans).

Yet I knew - we knew - with a certainty of instinct that comes from your deepest gut.

Together we stood at the edge of everything - stood holding hands, me wiping tears and him in a cold sweat of nervousness - and we leapt. 

Yes, we looked before we leapt. We looked out into a future entirely uncertain, found no promises or answers there, and looked at each other.  Here, at the edge of everything there were two people who delighted in each other daily, who laughed together hourly, who told each other outrageous stories and darkest secrets. Here were two newly-minted adults without the wisdom of years or experience, but possessed of the inexplicable confidence that this - this! - was Quality.

Two people leapt that day, out into the unknown.  Through updrafts and downdrafts, through terrifying spins toward the ground and through exhilarating swoops towards the heavens, we live out that leap, every single day.  

There is no other hand I'd rather be holding.

Happy Anniversary, Mr Nilsen. 

The Tightrope

Random fact: I am completely obsessed with tightrope artists.  Funnily enough, this doesn't come up often in conversation.

This weekend, friends shared with us that they have hit a bit of a rough patch in their marriage.  Along with the heartache that quite naturally springs from a revelation like this, I was left with a vague sense of imbalance.  I went to sleep troubled, and woke with the vivid image of a tightrope walker on my mind. 

A tightrope stretches in front of each of us, in any relationship that matters.

You begin your journey in confidence.  Of course you step out in confidence!  How else could you be convinced that this was a reasonable undertaking, if not for your blind faith that you absolutely have the skills and abilities to reach the other side?  As you inch your way out over the chasm, your confidence is so great that the twist of rope beneath you feels as solid as a twelve inch plank.

You get a bit further out, and the winds pick up.  Maybe it is a single gust, that blows you momentarily off balance.  Maybe it is a steady breeze that makes each step, each inch forward a challenge. Maybe your legs simply start to tremble.

Whatever the reason, all of the sudden you are wobbling, way out on this woven cord with nothing to hold onto. Every rule of tightrope walking tells you not to look down - never look down - but maybe it's the looking down that made you start to sway in the first place. Maybe you took your eye off the far side, and started focusing on your toes curling around that stupid skinny rope instead.

So you're wavering, and you know good and well that you are the only person who will steady the rope. It won't happen by looking down, it won't happen by flailing your arms around helplessly. The only thing - the only thing - that will stave off disaster is a change of focus. Pulling your eyes up, and finding the far side again.

Maybe some of us won't be able to pull it back. Maybe some of us won't be able to withstand the buffeting wind, or maybe the sway of the rope will have gotten too far out of control. Maybe all that can be done at that point is to consciously look down, to keep looking down, and believe with all your heart that the safety net of those that love & care for you will be there as you fall.

Some of us...some of us will make it through those vicious winds. Some of us will find the steadying stillness, and we won't be sure quite how we did it. The only way through the swaying is to continue: stopping - standing still - is simply not an option. 

So, whilst I've had that vague swaying feeling all day, having heard my friend's news, I will choose to continue along the journey on my own rope, stretching out over the void. Inch by inch, my toes will creep across the twisted cord. 

I have to believe that my friends' toes will keep them moving across the rope too. If not, I sure as hell am one of the people who make up the net underneath.

*********

There are millions of blogs out there - funny, frank, or starkly painfully honest - that will freely discuss our failures as parents. But I find that when it comes to our failures in relationships, we are less able to open up, to admit that we are wavering.

Just for today, let Your People know that you love 'em, no matter where they are on (or off) the rope.

Adventure

Say you're a girl who likes a routine.  Say you're the kinda gal who might run the same route every day for 2 years, just because you love knowing exactly how many miles you've run, how fast you've run it, and knowing right when the hills can be expected.

Say you're the kind of person who loves to know what's happening today, tomorrow, and the next day.  The kind of person who tries not to cringe when an acquaintance casually says, "Oh, we'll just figure it out when we get there."  What? No plan? Ack ack ack ack ack.

You may be the kind of person who is mortified by these tendencies.  You may wish daily that you were a fly-by-the-seat-of-yer-pants kinda gal.  You may wish that it didn't give you an ulcer to be lost in a strange city, or to rushing for a flight, unsure if you'll make it in time.    You may watch people who operate without a wristwatch with envy, wondering if it EVER bothers them not to know what time it is, or if they're late, or how many minutes it is until the next appointment.

It's funny how life works.  Because say you're that kind of person, and you fall in love with a person who approaches life in exactly the opposite way:  someone who always flies by the seat of their pants, someone who never knows where their watch/wallet/keys are, but lives in faith that these items will turn up eventually.  Someone who hates to brush their teeth the same way twice, much less drive the same road, run the same course, or wear the same shoes two days in a row.

These two opposites might get married, might delight in this particular element of opposite-ness, and might make a darn good life from it.

And then might come a cosmic event where the kids had a day off from school, the Farmor would be in town from Norway, and the forecast for the beach would be sunny sunny sunny.

Then the Seat of Pants Man may come up with the bright idea of taking off for the ocean - driving into the night, and then spending tomorrow at the beach.  Mrs OCD might struggle mightily with ditching her schedule, with leaving all of her routines at home, with just "throwing sleeping bags into the car" and driving off towards the coast.

But she will do it.

Because man oh man does she love the adventures that Mr Seat of the Pants comes up with.  She loves that he has passion for possibilities as-yet-undiscovered, and loves that he ignores (in the nicest way possible) her protestations of practicality.

So we're off, dear readers.  Off on our next adventure.  Look for photos of the Not-Plan soon.

Fourteen

They didn't think anyone was listening.  Two waiters, gossiping over the canape trays whilst they waited for more bruschetta and mini quiche.

They're so cute, aren't they??
Yeah... they are.
You know, a lot of these gigs you totally know the couple's not going to make it past five years.  But this couple?  You can just tell they're going to make it. They're for real.

Two catering waiters, maybe working a summer job to get back to Georgetown in the fall.  They passed judgement on this young couple, in the midst of the happiest night of their life, passed judgement without emotion, without investment.

What they didn't know was that the best man stood directly behind them, waiting to refill his gin & tonic from the secret stash in the fridge (woot! for non-alcoholic weddings).    He heard them, and his heart swelled.  Because he knew too - he knew this couple was the real deal. He knew that they would fight and they would cry and they would laugh - laugh so much -  and they would be broke and they would be rich.  They would be rich in all they needed.

He knew they would make it.  And on the eve of their 14th anniversary, he emailed this:  "happy anniversary my dears. love you guys!  you have - and are going to - make it."

see the brand-spankin-new wedding band? ooh, shiny!

Happy Anniversary - happy anniversary to the man who makes me laugh, who makes me crazy, who is my biggest champion and my very best friend.  This year we earned it, my love.  May fourteen be the smallest drop in a huge bottomless bucket of anniversaries.

The Family that Strips Together Stays Together

Remember when I posted the tragical statistic of couples only getting 30 minutes a WEEK of quality communication? Remember how I asked just when would a couple find any more time that than, faced with the overwhelming task of just staying on top of the family occupations?

Well today Mr NilsenLife and I had a hot date.  We decided we'd go ahead and strip on our front porch. Way to spice things up, right?

It's an old house - ninety plus, actually - and needs a little cosmetic work.  This spring, the project is stripping the paint on the front porch, columns and trim, and prepping it for repainting.  Can't say that the prospect filled either of us with joy:  how to execute a huge task and at the same time keep small people out of lead paint dust and caustic stripping chemicals?

Cue the generous offer of Grandparental Babysitting, and we were faced with an entire day - a beautiful, 70-degree spring day with nothing but the two of us, a can of paint stripper, and a scraping tool called a Five-Way.  (Kinky bunch, those housepainters.)

So 9am found us out on the porch, scraping away.  Our getup for the hot date consisted of paint-covered jeans, old tshirts, and my hair scraped back under a hat.  Didn't matter.  We spent our morning working quietly, side-by-side, concentrating on scraping and chipping.  By 11:00, though, we'd hit our stride:  we chatted about football and the World Cup, about blog posts and the mystery of site traffic, and by the time we got towards 4:00 the conversations had moved on to Big Ticket Items - the topics that never come up in your normal week, due in large part to sheer exhaustion.  

We ate lunch together on the steps - spicy salami, pickles & cheddar on baguette.  We took turns checking Facebook to see what was going on in the world. (Answer? not much.) We scheduled an iced coffee break, and even had a little impromptu break dance session when the Beastie Boys came on the stereo. (Aw yeah the girl can shake it. Uh huh uh huh...)  There was a well-deserved beer towards the end of the afternoon.

Ask an old married couple - ask 'em what they would love to do if they had an entire day together.  Chances are they might say something along the lines of "a chance for a whole conversation.  A good meal together.  Drinking coffee.  Dancing.  Re-living old times."

That, my friends, is exactly what we did today.  I had a whole day of romance, a whole day of connection, a whole day of good times with my best friend.  Hot date indeed.  I'll strip with you any day, babe.

The One Word I Never Said

Two college students - kids, really -  laid on the floor, hashing over their future once again.  It involved two continents, the end of a Bachelor's Degree and the beginning of a Masters, and a lot of anxiety about soulmates. 

I have to know.  I just have to KNOW, you know.  What are we trying to do here?

I love you, Kirsten.  I'll do whatever you want to do. I just know that I want to marry you.
 
Well that's all well and good, but how can you SAY that without KNOWING what we're going to DO  next year?  (What can I say? I'm a girl who likes to know The Plan.)  I just have to KNOW what it is we're planning on.  I mean, how can you say you KNOW you want to marry me but you don't KNOW when?  How?  Where?

and so on.  Around and around and around we went that night - a quiet December night in suburbia - two kids laying on the floor in my childhood bedroom.   We were either headed far apart, or headed for together from here on out.

What I remember was my voice, growing in stridency as I demanded to KNOW what was going to happen.  I wanted to KNOW how he was so sure of himself.  I remember, actually, feeling increasingly irritated with his implacability.

And finally, there was this:  Well Kirsten, then let's just get married.  Let's just get married.

This stopped me short.  I was mid-sentence - in full stride with theoreticals, full of planning, full of options.  I hadn't expected that phrase - not at all.

And just like a sail going limp on a calm sea, my words stopped.  I turned over on my elbow and demanded to know if he was serious.  Demanded.

Of course, he said simply.  Of course I'm serious.

There was no ring.  There was no elaborately crafted proposal speech.  There were no harps on the mountain at dawn, there was not even a down-on-one-knee.   We were barely adults, barely launched in the world, and all we knew was that we were going to head out into the void together.

We stared at each other - astounded that such a momentous decision had been made in the Laura Ashley chintz-covered bedroom of my teen years - and were absolutely certain that no other decision could have been made that night.

We went to the movies then, saw the Harrison Ford version of Sabrina, and came home giggling about the fact that he'd have to ask my dad for his blessing.

It wasn't until I was falling asleep that night that I realized:  the one word I never said was Yes.

Yes, Nilsen - for every night since then, I say Yes.

*****

This post is linked as part of the final prompt - YES - in Momalom's Five for Ten series.

Dinner Party

Nine adults, sitting around a table, chatting ... laughing. 

Our hosts have done this before - they move as a seamless team, offering chairs, filling water glasses, pulling chicken off the grill.

Stories are traded, jokes are made, gentle observations offered.

Watcher that I am, I listen carefully, and keep quieter than usual.  I enjoy the fact that no one is spilling milk, demanding their Lamby fork, or bolting their food so they can go biking. 

My husband makes an inadvertent joke that gets the biggest guffaws of the evening, and I catch his eye across the table.  I give him the smallest of winks, the one that says 'you make me laugh the most.'

I listen as two of the couples tell stories of their weddings - weddings that happened before I was born.  I watch as our host smiles at his wife's story - he doesn't let on if he's heard it before - the smile is almost internal.  Another couple laughs in the exact same spot in a story, and both shake their heads ruefully - they could be sharing the same thought bubbles if they were in a comic strip.

I am startled, all of the sudden, by the realization that I am watching these couples, these old friends, cement their relationship in the quotidien.  I see the map showing where a lifetime together will take you - to a friend's dinner table, where you will finish one of your husband's jokes, and laugh at another one, and sit quietly in the confidence of his arm around the back of your chair. 

I want that, the Watcher whispered to herself.  I want that, for my best friend and I.

Thirty Minutes? A Week?

Yesterday I heard the most jaw-dropping fact: on average, a couple will spend 30 minutes per week catching up with each other.  Thirty minutes per week of really talking -  about their jobs, their days, their dreams.

This little tidbit came on top of me looking at the clock each night this week at 11pm or so and asking myself When exactly does this happen?

After the dentists appointments and the school pickups and supper and bike riding time and emptying the dishwasher and sorting the laundry and searching for the permission slips and exercise classes and [oh hey!] work - paid and unpaid, of course - and lunch making and bill paying and crawling under the beds to retrieve Lego pieces and Polly Pocket shoes and stupid grocery shopping nope scratch that we won't get to the store..........


When exactly does this happen?

When exactly do I stay friends with my best friend?

When exactly do we get to talk about the screen play he might write when he wins the lottery and is needing to wind down from running a successful vineyard during the day?   When do we get to get things off our chest, to relate funny stories from the day, to gossip about the latest on Facebook, or to hatch hare-brained schemes to get bike lanes built through town?

When do we get to act like people who love each other, instead of business partners?

For all intents and purposes, we 'have it easy' - I am a stay-at-home-mom, he's got a really understanding employer who supports working from home on occasion, or an early night traded for a late night later in the week.  We 'get' to have him home for supper a few times a week, and then I completely understand when that means he hauls out the laptop for work after the kids are in bed.

"Having it easy," however, isn't the same as blissfully co-existing in total harmony.  We still want to carve out time for our own pursuits, our own private thoughts, a little eyebrow tweezing, a quick read-through of the latest in the European Champions League.  (InterMilan won today!) Add 'me-time' to all of the above, and you've got the recipe for how you end up at thirty minutes per week.

So if we're finding it hard to connect - if we're finding it hard to find the time to sit down and really talk - how hard must it be for so many more families!  Families trying to manage shift work, families trying to encompass two careers, families struggling with health issues or behavioral issues, families who are pulled in a million directions every single day?

Instead of throwing in the towel here, instead of saying with a heavy sigh "it's so HARD to be a modern family" - can I suggest something crazy?   I want to share with you a quote that came home from school last year, a sort of "Message from the Principal" thing.   We got things like this every week, and I don't know if the principal would even remember this if pressed.  But this quote has stayed with me every single day since then:

We live in a culture of busy-ness.  I do not think we will change this, but we can make choices for our children and ourselves.  Do we model for children a peaceful rhythm of activities in our own lives? [...] Do we carve out time for kids to be, to think, to create and to dream?

In our marriages, in our families:  there is so much at stake when we fail to connect.  Try, this week, to be more than average: aim for more than your thirty minutes with your significant other.   Try, this week, to connect and listen to the whole vineyard pipe dream, or the earth-shattering blog post, or, just listen to each others' quiet.

I'm guessing you won't be sorry you did.

Run run runaway

Back in college, there was this hill on my regular run - one of those hills that stretch forever upward. It was a long slow climb, steep enough to make your quads scream but not steep enough to justify walking.

I used to set myself these little goals to get myself up the incline:  "Just get to that little pothole - you can make it to there." Then, once I hit that, I'd look for the end of the pub fence, then the bumper of that red Fiesta up there, and so on.

Then, finally, the crest of the hill would come into focus, and often my running partner/steadfast friend Xander would dare me to sprint the last 100 feet.  And most times, I could do it:  with long strong strides,  I could spy the roundabout that marked the turn onto a long gorgeous straightaway through the village.

Well last week was the mothering equivalent of that hill.

I had a sick toddler, who apparently had nothing but a severe cold, but who constantly needed to wipe her snot fountain on my shoulders, constantly wanted to be held, and spent at least 4 nights waking up every hour, on the hour, and crying inconsolably until Mommy - of course only Mommy - would hold her and help her get a drink.  Her siblings, her father, her grandma - none were to touch her, none were to help her, or they'd be subject to the bloodcurdling wails of "noooooooooooooooooooo!  ONLEEEEEE MOMMMMMMEEEEEE!!"

Every morning I woke up more shattered than the night before, and encouraged myself just to get everyone off to school.  THEN I could catch a nap.  I slouched over my mid-morning coffee and told myself I could totally get through lunchtime, and then the baby would nap and then maybe I could too. Except that there was always laundry, always bills to pay, always One. More. Thing.  And then she'd wake up from the nap after 40 minutes, weeping from her own exhaustion and stuffy nose, and as I held her I'd promise myself if I could just make it through bedtime, I could go to bed early.  Of course I never did.

Which is all to say that this past weekend was my long glorious straightaway sprint.  It was my birthday, you see.  We had a long-postponed inn reservation in Annapolis, and plans for a quiet dinner.  Not fancy, not exotic, just...... away.

The drive away from my parents' was quiet - Torbjorn seemed to understand my need to sit without talking.  And then, in a sprint all of its own, my inner dialogue spilled out, for the rest of the forty mile trip.  It was a stream of consciousness brain dump, filled with all of the half-thoughts that had flitted across my mind all week.   Gently, cautiously,  my husband unwrapped the crazy talk, tried to make sense of it,  offered hilarious commentary and generally filled in as Best Guy Ever.

We checked in at the B&B, and changed for dinner.  I had time to put on makeup - even the frou-frou bits like [gasp!] concealer.

 This is a shot of our B&B, from the steps of the Maryland Capitol Building.

We ate at Level - A Small Plates Lounge.  Silly name, the small plates thing, but what a place.  All the menu items are sourced from local farms/fisherman, from the crab ceviche to the buffalo statay to the goats' cheese risotto.  They even make their own tonic for mixers - amazing.  With no rush, no sitter to return to, we savored bits of rice and chorizo, we toasted with a lovely Viognier, and we so enjoyed ourselves we didn't even bother with the Banana Dark Chocolate Bread Pudding with Vanilla Creme Anglaise.  (Not that I minded skipping it.  At all.  And not that I woke up thinking about it. At all. )

We then spent the evening wandering the brick-paved streets of Annapolis, under shadowy branches of blooming cherry and dogwood.  Then - guess what we did?  You'll never guess, I'll just tell you:  we went to sleep.  The week was that bad, people:  all I wanted for my 37th birthday was to go to sleep.

Well, to go to sleep, wake up at 7am - listen for the toddler wail, not hear it, decide I'll never sleep in again in a hundred years, and then wake up again at NINE. O. CLOCK.  Out-freakin-rageous.

 To make my twenty-four hour escape magic, all you had to do was top it off with diner coffee, Belgian waffles, a side of bacon, and watching sailboats on the harbor.  And that, my friends, is exactly what we did.

that's me, enjoying the silence, in the middle of a busy diner

I just might make the next leg of the run after all.

Full of it

My wedding ring has the words Semper Fidelis engraved on the inside. So does Torbjorn's.

Of course I knew this was the Marine Corps motto when we picked it.  I so *totally* knew.

But I digress.

What amazes me, fourteen years later, is that the phrase 'always faithful' would strike us - so young, so clueless! - as the words that would define our marriage.  I like to think of it as further evidence that even at the tender age of 23(!) we had some instinctual knowledge of what it would take to make a marriage work.

These days, with the Tiger Woods and the Jesse James stories breaking big in the headlines, the notion of 'faithfulness' is getting a lot of lip service.  But the word faithful means so very much more than simply 'not cheating on your spouse.'

Take faithful, and take it at face value:  let's look at it as literally being full of faith.

Faith is the belief in something unknowable, something for which you may not have proof.  Faith is saying, despite all evidence to the contrary, I believe that this is a good thing.  Faith, be it a trust in a Higher Power or a trust in your spouse, relies upon a willing suspension of disbelief.

Because we are humans.  We will screw up.  We may make the wrong parenting decisions, we may make really ill-considered purchases (I'm just saying!), we may say or do incredibly hurtful things.

But a relationship full of faith means that even the worst days are better together - better than a pretty good day alone.  Living faithfully means that even in the midst of anger, in the midst of hurt feelings, in the midst of deep disappointment, you have faith in this person beside you.

You have faith in their ability to come back to the negotiating table. You have faith in their ability to see the funny side of it (eventually.)  You are full of faith that the time and energy and love invested in this relationship will be the foundation of your marriage and that that is solid enough get you through.

It is really the only way to live in relationship with anyone (spouse, partner, friend, or fellow Marine, even) - if you can't live full of faith, if you can't be faithful,  then all you are left with is the suspicion that around every corner is disappointment.   Surely this is an impoverished way to live.

*******
This post is linked as part of Bridget Chumbley's One Word at a Time blog carnival. This week the topic is (obviously) Faithfulness.  I'm post #41 - that's a lot of writing about Faithfulness!

Transformed: More than meets the Eye

The decade between 26 and 36 is not overly obvious in the changes it wreaks.  Most definitely there are few bits & pieces headed south that weren't, ten years ago, but it's not like there is puberty or even a graduation to mark the passing of the years.

But on the last day of The Aughts when we review such things, the transformations of my life in this decade couldn't be more profound.

I added the title of Mother to my resume.  And have been sure that I'll be fired, every day since.

I started the decade loving good food.  I end the decade with a love of honest food.

I moved house, I moved continents, and I created Home.  (Even after leaving the place I call home.)

I consciously voted for less snark in my life. (Less is a moving target, of course.)  For those that knew me in the years before, you will grasp just how groundbreaking this shift was.

I went from believing that marriage is easy to knowing that marriage is hard, but absolutely worth any and all work required.

I went from thinking friends were just lovely to believing that friends belong in the same category as water, food, and oxygen.

I went from traveling to seven different countries in one year (2001) to traveling to seven different preschools in 2009.  (Really only one preschool and one elementary, but it feels like more.)  I also haven't traveled further than the next state over for two years.

I became an excellent cook.  And in the last six, I've cooked spaghetti, black bean chili, and macaroni and cheese at least once a week.

I found a community of faith that, literally, surprised me with its joy, and its depth.  Here is a sermon that left my jaw hanging open.

I realized I am a writer.  I spent so many years believing that my unique skill laid in appreciating what others wrote, never understanding that my time would come.

I fulfilled almost every childhood dream, and then learned that even a Dream Come True is complicated.

I became more educated than I ever imagined.  And I finish the decade aware of just how little I do know.


Somehow, all that I have learned in the last ten years seems to have 'settled' in 2009.  More and more I find myself feeling that finally I am glimpsing the Big Picture:   that all of the disparate elements listed above have come together to show me the way forward.  Is this all a bit mystical for you?  I'd say that's something new to me in recent years too.

I am willing to believe there is a great deal out there we don't know, or understand. I know that we must show love, and kindness, to make anything work. So there's my Super Duper Schmooper Big Idea:  be kind, show love, and don't ask Kirsten, because she's just figured out she doesn't know all that much.

Happy 2010 to all of you.  May it bring you great joy. 

Marriage is Easy! Part II

What is it all the cool kids used to say?  Psych?  Sike?  Anyway.

You knew I'd be back tonight, didn't you?

I just had to finish up with this whole Happy Marriage concept that Oprah is putting out there.  It's been  bouncing around in my brain, buzzing like an unfulfilled honey bee.

Here's the thing.  I'm no scientist - but really?   SEVENTEEN individuals who claim they're in a happy relationship?  In my view, seventeen does not a study make.  An interesting observation, but really? A study?  Next, did they look at all at the brain activity of people claiming to be in unhappy relationships?  Maybe they were also in a state of super-calm, they just happened to be in toxic relationships too.  Hmmm.

So it got me thinking about a conversation Torbjorn and I had regarding the month-end post.  Torbjorn's observation was that we had spent much less 'face time' - normal chatting, tv watching, sock folding face time - but yet he felt that he'd gotten to know me in new ways, which he sort of liked.

Really?  After fifteen years together, a little month-long blogging exercise gave him access to parts my head that he didn't know about before?  That may be a little bit discouraging (ahem - must do more date nights), but also positive:  there is still so much for us to know - and like! - about each other. [Editors Note:  He would like to clarify that the depth was in the drafts that none of you got to see.  Sorry suckaz.]

I have to say, disappointing though it may be, that the key to long-term romantic happiness just can't be 'sustaining positive illusions.'  Because really, what they're saying, is that by just pretending that there isn't anything wrong with your partner - although the evidence of twenty one long years may point to the contrary - you will "make romantic love last."

I think the idea itself is huge.  I do.  I have seen it work in my husband - he is able to gaze at me looking like the Gates of Hell spewed me out on Recycling Day, and tell me that I'm beautiful.  And mean it.  But given the work - the sheer volume of days where you tell yourself I. Will. Get. Through. This. - of a good marriage, it is almost a discount to say that your success is down to focusing on your partner's good bits.

Yes? No?  There was a whole lot of positive response to the first post, and a lot of folks willing to say 'yeah!  I'll buy that!'  So I don't want to be the Scrooge who says nope, no such thing.

 I think that the headiness of those first months of Deeply In Love is almost scary.  I remember those early days of romance, and remember vividly thinking to myself "What am I going to feel after this is over?  Because I know I can't stay this high for fifty years!"   Here's the thing:  the days of thinking everything he said was deep, every gesture he made was romantic, every letter he wrote was profound?  Yep. Done. (Sorry sweetie.) But I do know that the love found after the years of hard work has so much more quality to it.  There is a great deal more meaning in 'loving you for who you are' after 15 years together than when you're both young and charming. 

So, no.  Sorry Oprah.  You gotta give me more than this to go on:  surely you & Steadman are past that.

Wedding wisdom

We spoke about weddings today, Cecilie and I...

It always starts with a request to tell about my wedding. Today I managed to turn it to her thoughts on the matter, and I asked her if she was going to get married. She told me NO, that was not going to happen and when I asked why, she told me that she was afraid.

"What are you afraid of?" was my follow up.

"I am afraid I would miss my mommy!"