WHAT I'D MISS THE MOST
I have a picture of my wife that I keep in a folder in my filing cabinet. She'd kill me if I posted it, so you'll have to settle for a description. It's a picture of her painting our old house, and was taken back in August of '99. The place had an indented corner in the back, and she's standing in the 90-degree angle formed by the section of wall facing west and the section facing north. She's finished the west wall (leastwise, as high up as she could reach, leaving the top part for me), and is about halfway done with the north wall, the paintbrush frozen in mid-stroke. She's wearing sloppy, baggy sweats, splattered with white, and her hair is pulled back in a "no one's going to see me anyway" ponytail, with the front bangs doing their Sam Sheepdog thing in front of her face. She's giving me that corner-of-the-eye glance and that bemused "why the hell are you taking this picture?" half-smile that only a woman indulging her man's most inexplicable whim can give.
I have pictures of her looking like a Cosmo cover-girl, too, but this is the one that I cherish more, and this is the one that I'd spend the most time crying over if anything ever happened to her.
It was taken 4 months after we were married, and it captures everything about her that I love best.
When we decided to move out of that drafty old shack, she insisted that we had to do something about the exterior color, which was the brownish-pink of a diseased salmon. After pricing both siding and a professional paint job, she breezily announced that we would be painting the house white (it was the cheapest color) and doing the work ourselves. With great effort, I managed to choke back my gut reaction of "just exactly how insane are you, anyway?"
My wife has a knack for breezily announcing major projects without considering potential roadblocks (the obsessing over which is my forte), but I'd already learned that she was right to do so about 90+ percent of the time. So paint we did.
3 weeks later, the house was white & we did eventually sell the place. Mostly, I concede, on the merits of the nice paint job.
But when this picture was taken, we were still in that scary middle part where the task, at times, seemed impossible to complete, yet too much had been done to turn back. The cake was half-baked and there was no separating the ingredients anymore. I was still counting obstacles and fearing that they might be insurmountable.
But not her. In this picture, in that indulgent smile & glance, I see the hope & love & optimism, the cheerful supportiveness, and the unshakable faith in a never-ending chain of better tomorrows that is my wife's greatest gift to our marriage. I looked at a half-painted wall & saw the mess, the trouble, and the tiny spots that the brush had missed. But she was seeing the bigger, better house we'd be living in someday; the exciting life, filled with adventure and travel; and the endless, joyous future she’d share with the only man she's ever loved enough to proudly call "husband".
When I look at that picture, I remember everything that's good, positive, optimistic, loving, and supportive about her. And on this day, our 51-month anniversary (yes, I still count and cherish every month), I look at that picture, remember why I married her, and remind myself, yet again, that she is, unquestionably, the best thing that ever happened to me.
posted by Harvey at 11:04:55 PM permalink HOME
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