Let's Stay Together

On this date nine years ago, on a day very much like today, I became the luckiest woman in the world.

But that is not the cliché it sounds like. I am not lucky because I married my best friend, or my soul mate, or my super-secret special someone for whom I had been waiting my whole life. Those things all happened, of course; I wouldn't have married him otherwise.

I am also not particularly lucky because I "married my father," a man who makes the exact same faces and the exact same noises and the exact same silly jokes as dear old Dad, a man who lives and dies by his sports teams just like Daddy, a man who loves his family more than anything in the world, even when he wants nothing so much as to murder them in their sleep, just like Daddy.

My luck is not from being wedded to a man who loves my housekeeping skills, if you define "housekeeping skills" as "above-average-to-excellent cooking and the ability to find a pair of clean underwear, most of the time, plus taking the occasional swipe at the toilet with one of those cleaning wand thingies." I don't do ironing or windows or dishes, except for the stuff that the baby needs.

I do not consider myself fortuitously gifted because my husband doesn't care that I sometimes curse too much or weigh too much or drink too much or meddle to much. He doesn't care that, maybe 5 days out of every month, I am the emo-iest emo kid who ever lived, and then on top of that, sometimes I have wicked PMS. I don't care that sometimes he spends more time in a week alone with World of Warcraft than he does alone with me.

None of this explains why I am the luckiest woman in the world. Why do I feel so lucky? Because, once, a long time ago, before we ever got married, before we ever even talked about getting married, I told him about something I saw once in a card. It was from my father, for my mother, and it was signed "I love you always and all ways."

And today I got a card that was signed the same way. "Always and all ways." I am lucky because he remembers the things that are important to me, no matter how small.

However far away, I will always love you

However long I stay, I will always love you

Whatever words I say, I will always love you

I will always love you.

-- The Cure