The first time I saw her, across the oh so clichéd crowded room, I couldn't believe my eyes: why on earth was a junior high school student at this college party? Oh, no, I was assured, she's actually a junior in college. Her? No. Impossible. And yet apparently it was true.
Then we got cast in a play together. Even though we'd never spoken, I remembered her immediately—how could I not? It was the impossibly young-looking girl from a few months back. Weird casting—she was so friendly and upbeat and it didn't seem like she could possibly fit the snotty, uptight character at all—but whatever. And then we sat down at the first table read and I was blown away to the point of total intimidation by her acting chops; there were several good actors in the play but she was an obvious step above the rest. Several steps. Several big steps.
I couldn't figure it out. She was such a great actress and yet...and yet she seemed maybe a bit ditzy? She was always laughing. And if I'd learned anything in my 20 years of hard-earned wisdom it was that happy people are not smart. Grim and gritty people, they're the smart ones. The tortured souls. Not people who enjoy life.
And then came the night a week or two later when I really spoke with her for the first time and realized, oh...oh my. She's not just smart. She's brilliant. She's brilliant and I'm an idiot. She's brilliant and funny and talented and sweet and so out of my league. And yet...she had this one really glaring character flaw: she seemed to kinda like me. That...didn't seem possible.
Yeah, turns it out it very much was. We've been — as far as I know — exclusive ever since that night. (I mean, we never actually had The Talk about whether or not we were officially dating, but I'm assuming that getting married means we're exclusive now?) She went back to Colorado for the summer and I went back to Connecticut but we kept talking and when the fall semester rolled around we fell right back into the whole boyfriend and girlfriend thing with long drives through the Virginia countryside. She graduated and proceeded to spin her wheels for a year, waiting for me to catch up.
Then I graduated and moved up to New York City to work at a job she'd scored for me and she headed down to grad school in North Carolina to be with people who were more her intellectual speed.
And still we stayed together, talking every single night for hours on the phone.
She graduated and moved up to work in publishing and then we got married and had a kid and then another and then another and moved to Virginia and had a few more and then out to Southern California—the one place she swore she'd never live but needs must—where we had another and I worked a terrible, terrible job and then went freelance so I could be home with them again, since that's all I ever want to do. And now we're up here in the Pacific Northwest and it's the best fit we've ever had, with great food and gorgeous volcanos and so many people with purple hair and somehow as of today it's been almost exactly half my life I've now been married to her. It doesn't seem possible. And yet math doesn't lie, no matter how much one tries to convince it to.
She's still the one with whom I want to share every dumb or fascinating or infuriating or helpful or mildly humorous thing I read. She's still the one I want to curl up on the couch and binge-watch shows with. She's still the one who grabs my hand when we go out for a walk, if I haven't already grabbed hers first. (I'm positive I almost always reach out for her hand first and she's sure she always initiates. This is perhaps the only disagreement we have ever had about which I am absolutely right.) She's my best friend, my favorite writer, my favorite singer, my role model and the hottest damn thing in the world.
Every night I do all the little closing up of the house things: make sure the basement lights are off, the porch lights on, doors are locked, the water in the fridge is refilled, that she's got water on her nightstand, all that. And then I get in bed and I'll read for a few minutes before I hear her book softly hit the mattress as she falls asleep. The sound of the book falling usually wakes her up just enough to grunt grumpily—every night, the act of falling asleep annoys her, as it means she's not going to be able to read or sing or garden for while and what a waste. And I'll look at that face, still impossibly adorable, still impossibly young looking, even as the first greys have started to show in her still magnificent hair, and I'll think I can't possibly be this lucky, she cannot possibly still like me—maybe this is it, maybe this is the day my luck runs out and she'll wake up tomorrow and the moment I've been waiting for since we first started dating will be here, and she'll finally be tired of me, and wonder what on earth she was ever thinking. And if so, well, I smile as I watch her breathe in her sleep, the corner of her mouth doing that little twitch it sometimes does, and I think, hey, I had a good run.
And then the next morning rolls around and she comes in from her early morning writing session to wake me up so I can make The Boy's lunch and she smiles at me with that same incandescent smile and I think, well, nope, I seem to still have at least one more day as the luckiest guy on the planet. After 25 years it still doesn't really seem possible. And yet.
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