My Valentine

Ritual

I come half awake a mere 5 hours after collapsing into the bed.  It’s 0600. My body hurts from sleeping too hard and not enough.  It aches for caffeine.   I roll over and look upon my wife sleeping peacefully.  Sometimes there are quiet little snores or a barely perceptible twitch of her face as some dream puppy tickles her nose with kisses.   I lay there for a moment thinking how truly beautiful she is and then… I poke her with a finger.  She grumbles and rolls over.  Using the tiniest bit of pressure, I slowly start pushing her towards the edge of the bed.  A pause.  Another nudge, this time with a little more pressure.  Another pause.  Another nudge. Eventually she overcomes the inertia of sleep and quietly slips from the bed.  I pretend to be asleep. She pretends to try not to wake me.  Ten minutes later she’s back with a cup of coffee for me.  Softly calling my name until I wake up (again) and then handing me my coffee.  It’s sweet with too much sugar and an extra bit of milk. Exactly the way that I want it.  Perfect.  Every time.  I’m an ass.  I get that, no need to point it out.

I mumble a thank you.  Every time.  Sometimes I add that I love her simply because I do.  And hey, at least I’m a grateful ass.

Circumstance

She has to be careful in stores.  If she looks at something too longingly, I buy it whether she really wants it or not.  If she actually tells me that she wants something, I buy it.  It might take a while to get the money lined up but I’ll figure out a way.

A $30,000 car?  No problem, I’ve got debt to spare baby.  A $1000 pistol?  You betcha Sarah Palin, it’s all yours.  Just give me a week or two.  An $0.83 cent pack of twizzler… hers!  She told me once that she likes stuffed animals.  15 years later she’s had to box many of them up for storage.  She gets one every Easter.  Sometimes for her birthday, or Christmas, or just because I love her.

It doesn’t matter.  I’ll spend every cent that I make and more.  I’ll overlook things that interest me so that she can have what she wants.  She says that’s unfair. I don’t think so but I sometimes feel like I’ve stolen  something from her; that right that all of us have to want something that we will never have. The passing fancy, briefly shared with another and then forgotten. Maybe she has those things and I don’t know about them.  If I ever find out, I’ll buy them whatever they are.

I buy her what she wants because she’s the only reason that I bother to wake up every morning and go to work.  Left to myself, I’d be a complete and utter bum… or a prisoner.  I know, I remember what it was like before I met her.  She saved me.  I have what I do because of her so she has a right to the things that she wants.  My saving Angel.  I love her.

Felicity

I don’t have to pretend to be happy when I’m near her.  I just am.  We’re often found in a restaurant sitting across from one another happily engaged with our iPhones while we wait for food. Sometimes we’re even interacting on FaceBook trading jokes or chatter for all the world to see (or, at least, registered friends).  We don’t have to talk every minute.  Just being near her is enough for me. 

I do make an effort to talk with her sometimes because she’s feeling lonely though.  I understand this.  It can be tough for her with me locked away in the next room working all day.  Physically near but mentally in another world all together.

She plays with the  pets and tries to silence the cockatiel (usually  unsuccessfully) while I’m on conference calls.  She feeds and medicates the ferrets twice a day.  Feeds the neighborhood birds in her many feeders come rain, shine or snowfall.  She enjoys these things.  I enjoy that she does. I love watching her moving around the yard through the living room window.  Absorbed in her world of birdseed and raccoon pilfered suet feeders while I talk about computers with some guy in India on my headset.  It brings me back to the  things that are important.  Grounds me.

Sometimes during the middle of the day she takes a nap while I’m working.  I’ll wander through the house for something to eat and find her snuggled on the couch with a puppy or cuddled with a cat in our bed.  A pillow laid over her head to block the sunlight.  I stand quietly watching her.  Love swells up inside of me and I embrace it for all that I’m worth.  I tell her sometimes that I love her so much that it hurts.  It does.  I wonder if others get this feeling.  You would think that poets would have expressed it by now if so.  But maybe it’s such a strong feeling that even the poets can’t get it down on paper.   Then again, maybe it’s a tiny bit of psychopathy that I shouldn’t mention on the Internet.  I knew I should have studied harder in those damned psych classes.

So, that’s my valentine.  How about yours?