Lucky Number Seven

Moment I Fell In Love With You #4682449:

We were riding the swings at the fair, last Tuesday. You were sitting in front of me, slightly turned the side. Not looking at me--your eyes slightly closed, a small smile lighting its way across your face. We were high in the air, and it was starting to get cold. I fell in love with you again, just like that.

The fair is much scarier when you are older, it turns out. You look up, and there's only one loop of metal holding you to the top. If it broke, you would spin out and hit the ground, die just like that. I didn't like thinking about how I was hanging by that one loop. So I hung myself on your smile.

As we went back to the ground, you reached back and took my hand. An hour later, you stood by laughing as I puked the three contents of my stomach [a gas station package of Combos, half an order of fried cookie dough and a bottle of water] into a trashcan. Moment #4682521.

***

On our one year anniversary, I wrote a list of 365 things I loved about you. I worked so hard on it, wrote pages and pages until my hand hurt.

Now, six years later, I stack loves up on loves--they grow exponentially, building on each other.

I love that, while I was sitting across the table from you last night, you told your friend about this incredible soup I make [my dearest: one jar of salsa, two jars of black beans, a box of chicken broth and half a rotisserie chicken, the kind you get from the deli section of Publix--may you always be so easy to please].

I love that you will wait for me to stop crying about my stupid 1/4 of a boss when he upsets me on an afternoon when I am 15 minutes from leaving. That you will wait for me to cry it out.

I love that you almost made me burn the shit out of myself on the oven tonight because you smacked my ass as I bent over to take out a pan of lasagna. Probably only because I didn't burn myself.

Not that it would make me love you any less.

***

My dearest, every day you sign up for a tough row to hoe. It's true. I have decided that I want to be successful in a field that eats peoples' souls for dinner. A field where my stupid 1/4 of a boss told us, without flinching, that he wants us to be running experiments for 60 hours a week [which, let's face it, I don't--yet. But it's coming. We both know it.] I have signed up for a field where I daily question my own intelligence. My own ability to focus. My own ability to be competent in science and in medicine.

But you always believe in me.

Now, here--we've spent almost as much time post-BigBadHurt as we did pre. For almost half of what we define as us, we've done it under the pressure of that bad year. We spent two years in a long-distance relationship. We went directly from that to living under the same roof. Sometimes we have true finesse, and sometimes we have all the grace of a waltzing buffalo. But either way--and mostly the former, I am fortunate to report--we make it, every day, to the finishing line. Hand-in-hand, battered and bruised or smelling like roses. We make it, every day.

***

If you had told me, in 2002, that one day you'd shop exclusively at the Gap and American Eagle, that you'd learn to crave exercise and eat fruits and vegetables, that you would become some sort of cologne connoisseur, well--I would never have believed you. At some point, you started loving Academy Award contenders and drinking Diet Coke. We've cycled through video games and favorite TV shows and favorite restaurants and favorite beer. If I could have ever imagined our life as it is right now--at any time before it happened--I wouldn't have believed it.

When you moved in, this past May, everyone tentatively asked how it was. "We're having so much fun," I'd say. We are.

Most nights, if we go to bed at the same time, we lie beside each other, laughing. And then I turn on my side, and you rub my neck or my back. Sooner or later, I drift off. In the mornings, you go to work early, and I roll over into your cool side of the bed. It's spacious there without your endless elbows in the way, but I miss you nonetheless. I never tell you that, though. "Good riddance," I say. "I'm glad that I get some time to steal your space."

What I mean is: I know you hate your job, that you're embarrassed because you have a college degree and you work in the grocery department of a large chain store. But every day, I am proud of you because you do what you must to help provide for me.

What I mean, I guess, is this: I'd be lost without you here.

What I mean, unequivocally, is: You will never know how much it means for me that you stayed when you could have just as easily gone. When anyone with half a brain would have told you to turn tail and run as far as you can. When my mind split and tore across our relationship, you could have just as easily taken the ring and never talked to me again.

Every day, sometimes late at night, when you're asleep, all I want to say is "Thank you." But I can never find the words, can never even think about doing it without crying. And I know you don't read this blog, because it's just another of my interests that you support without participating--but thank you.

***

At the fair, you wanted to win me something. So, you went to the age guessing booth and successfully tricked the carnie into thinking you were much older than you are. You picked out some sort of a multi-colored stuffed animal--we've narrowed it down to something in the "barnyard" genre of animals, but have been unable to get past that, so you named it "Creature." Every night, when I get into bed after you, I find that you've moved Creature into my space, and I often wake up with it in the crook of my arm. And I think of you. The moments tick, tick, tick up and over into outer space. 4682599. 4682600. 4692601. To infinity. And more and more.