I am participating in my sister Jamie's book club where we mail around The Happy Book to each other and while we are waiting, every Friday we talk about what makes us happy.
Last week you heard me write about my birthday and my amazing friends. This week I want to write about my husband Reg. When I met Reg I was an angry and fierce woman who had no time for fun or anything silly. I was a serious feminist academic who made people squirm under her evil gaze. I am still that woman, LOL, but Reg has taught me how to laugh, how to have fun. He has taught me so much about compassion and is my warrior of light.
When I first met him (which is a long crazy story I could and maybe will put in book form one day) I could not see him. When I get super nervous, my eyes unfocus and I kind of go blind with a gaussian blur-type effect. That is what happened when I met him. All I could see was a long strip of white in long dark hair. It took hours for my eyes to focus and the meaner I was to him (long story, as I said) the more he smiled. This melted my heart and soon, I saw him quite clearly.
Last Friday I lost the use of my right hand. I had a flare and sat helplessly around my house on my birthday. He came home with a bouquet of bright red roses and reluctantly opened my presents for me, he loves it when I get excited to open gifts. He literally became my right hand, once again.
He (far right) and our friends went out to dinner to celebrate the next night, my hand just starting to become useable again. I was so scared I was not going to be able to cut through my steak dinner, things like that really embarrass me. Reg would have done that for me, had I asked, with an air of caring nobility. No matter what physical hurdle is in my way, he is always there to help me when I am ready to ask for that help.
I put the roses next to the print in our living room that was critical in telling me I had met the right man for me. I had seen that print at the Ex in Toronto the summer before we met. It was expensive. I had no money. I could not stop thinking about it. My friend Dawn told me to go back and buy it. She knew very few "things" ever called me this way. It was a print that was used on the cover of a book called White Raven, a book nobody seemed to have heard of before. Except Reg. Not only did he know the book, he had read it. One of the first gifts he ever got me was a copy of that book. Sadly, I hated the book which we found kind of funny. Still, it was the print that called me to him. I thought it only fitting to nuzzle the red roses next to that piece of art which means so much to me.
Yes, we are unhappy here but we are together, supporting one another through this painful period of our lives. I told him I sensed change brewing but it is deep in the earth, moving slowly, but moving still. We must be patient.
We have been through so much together. We are adventurers stuck in a suburban life that does not suit us. We are forever homesick and each cry out involuntarily in pain every time there is a commercial for the Olympics. A brief glimpse at our home. Wounded by memories of our happier life. We share the same battle scars.
Somehow we will get through this, together.
