She is a raging dynamo of love. I am a pile of old rotten boards and scrap metal, full of rusty nails and difficult to ignite.
Yesterday morning, amid concerns over snow, traffic, and general holiday stress preventing me from getting my shopping done, she told me, “I don’t need anything for Christmas. I’m happy. All I want for Christmas is you.” Every time I remember or write that, I just want to blubber. I don’t understand, but I know I’m the luckiest goddamn bastard in the entire world.
For decades all I did was bitch and moan, accuse and fight. It was a hideous spectacle of mother complex, father complex, and inherited (learned) ugliness. She almost bolted several times. Ten years ago I moved us from our house in the country in Maryland to the uncertain world of life on the edge in northern New Mexico. We’re still there, teetering on the upturned blade, while I race against my sagging body to bring some wholeness to my self and finally take care of us. I’m not there yet. There’s so much new behavior to learn. I feel like a little kid stuck in an old man’s body, figuring out which levers to pull.
She gave up her entire world to follow me here. Typically, she’s made a better adaptation to life in el Norte than I have, filling her days with music (rehearsals, performances) and being a part of it all. Me, I just keep falling out of the bed, so to speak. Yesterday when she came home from her studio, I didn’t get up to greet her because I was answering a lewd attack against me in a stinking comment thread on a silly political blog. I am an ass. Oh, she noticed, all right, and we “had it out.” But once again, I am forgiven. There is no logic to this. Logic would kill me dead.
I would give up my life for this woman. I’m not kidding. I don’t care about anything else, really, certainly not my stuttering career and the undeniable charms (and pitfalls) of the Land of Entrapment, not my opinions, nothing. I tell her almost every day, “You are my sunshine,” and that’s so true. Without the light richocheting off the smile that greets me every single morning, I would die.
To my beautiful, loving wife: Merry Christmas, sweetheart! (I don’t know how you do it, but I hope you never stop.)
Related posts:
- Christmas Music, Part III
- Taos Pueblo Christmas Eve
- Hating Christmas, or All’s Well That Ends Well [revised]
- Christmas Crash
- Christmas 2008
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Don’t you dare stop telling her she’s your sunshine and whatever fine things your fertile imagination can come up with!
Duly noted! When it comes to relationships, “don’t you dare” should be tattooed under my eyelids…