Time is a strange thing. It moves whether you want it to or not and also has a tendency to round things out so unless you really stop and pay attention it just rolls on. I mention that because the month of April is the five year anniversary of me and Alex being together. I refer to the month because neither of us can remember the exact date only that it happened in April when we met after talking online in a photography group where Alex was always going on about something.
He was an hour away in Gainesville and I was fresh from Colorado and new to Jacksonville. There was a festival of tall ships scheduled to be in Jacksonville and I thought it would be a great event to take pictures. I remember thinking him odd with all his little rituals once we met, but then began to see that there was a logic behind them and it was as if a light came on and we have been together ever since.
He surprised me this last week in April and scheduled a romantic getaway which is wild for Alex because he is practical almost to a fault. As I sat across from him in a restaurant on our last day I mentally paused to ask myself what was the glue that held us together?
I smile to myself because in a way he is like a father and no matter how much I know, he always seems to know more. He is the classic software engineer who knows everything which I find sometimes annoying and yet always reassuring. I’m smiling as I think back four years ago when we were working on a computer project and I asked if he had enough storage capacity and he replied casually that he had almost a terabyte of excess space. I remember looking at him in awe and thinking “Now THAT is power!”
Or is it the joy of having my own personal Terminator? He is always up for some new project or adventure. He will initiate nothing but if I pick the project, I had better be prepared to stand back and let him over organize it to the highest degree. In fact, organize it to the point I have to tell him to stop.
All of that goes into the making of us. But more than anything he has the capacity to make me laugh. Not just joyous laughter but the quick witted, roll on the floor, laugh until it hurts type of laughter. We just seem to understand each other. And there in the restaurant it comes to me that it has been five years of laughing…
You are lucky. Most couples don’t have what u have till they have been married for some time… And I say that because after the kids have grown or gotten to that age when they don’t need mom or dad’s assistance that’s when mom and dad can get back to being ‘just a couple’…. My husband and I were getting back to that point until he was taken… We had come full circle. Funny how time and circumstance does that.. I am not bitter, I’ve learned a lot about myself.. And if I hadn’t met my husband I would not be the person I am today..
Thanks Chrissy,
We have had our moments but no one has been able to make me laugh like he can and I guess he needed someone who enjoys his wit like I do…
Cherrie:
I enjoy this post. I have been married for seventeen years, and laughter and smiles have always been with us, despite hard times, illness,economic problems, etc.
Thank you.
Oscar (Chile)
Thank you Oscar,
Your comment lets me know there is more laughter to come…