Another way to be bread...

Well, you're home now. The first flurry and thrill of being home again for you all has passed, but we have not quite arrived at the time where normalcy returns to its grooves of friction. Not quite yet....it never hits that friction for you and me...it is a thing for the kids...

No, with you and me, it is often just like it is now: I read a funny and tender book and chuckle beside you, you drift off into a Sunday afternoon snooze after a long week dragging stuffed animals and car seats along with you. You're the man! You're my hero! Really! And as you drift off to sleep, you mumble something. I lean over you, "What, honey?" You say it one more time: "I'm so happy to be married to you."

I forget sometimes to breath deep for the smell of bread baking is delicious! I forget that there are other kinds of bread, and other ways to engage in not-so-rich communion between lovers. Even laying here beside you, I read this young man's musings about his experience with the ideas of bread and a woman he loved:

"A beautiful girl. My first girlfriend and I miss her. But she and I were never meant to be. She was in between boyfriends and was too pretty to go without. I was there like a number in a bakery. She pulled the ticket, glanced at it, and waited to exchange me for some loaf of bread or cake or pie or feeling that she was beautiful. I'm just the sap who adored her and wanted to hold her hand or sit close or look into her eyes. But I gave her the slip. Came right out of her hands before she could claim her prize and I bet you, I bet you a million dollars she doesn't even remember that number. She'll just pull another ticket, glance at it, and wait for them to call her out. She won't remember the things I said and won't realize I had never said them to another girl. She'd heard them before and it all ran together like bad poetry. You could see it in her eyes when I talked to her. You could hear it in the way she said thank you when I complimented her dress or the color of her eyes. And I suppose if I'm honest with myself, truly honest, I'd have to say I loved her."

I forget sometimes to be grateful. I forget that there are other men in the world whose hearts are like yours and now and then it occurs to me to pray them well-wishes. As women, we are encouraged to think about all sorts of types of men and the things a world of men might expect from us; it is easy to find such a thought fraught with despair: I could never be all of those things! I heard Rimsky Korsakov's Scheherazade last night. It is like that sometimes...a woman like me thinks that each night--even up to 1001 nights--the story must be so eloquent, so engaging that it holds death at bay for one more day. But now it is not the particular sheikh that drives the feelings of pressure, it is sadly in some ways a Christian culture thing. And outside this small circle where women learn submission, I forget that there are women like the one above, and the men who love them to their own loss. I forget to be grateful that we have found a quiet cove where none of these waters seep in.

I guess some of my thoughts also come from my watching Shadowlands yesterday with its poignant theme: the elixir of love promises that for every ounce of happiness that flows into the cup there is also an ounce of pain, the awareness and then actual life of inevitable separation at the moment of death, and yet the love is so rich as to be worth it.

And some of my thoughts spring from the fact that you have all been gone for the week, but I have you back now...

And as I trace my way along every spoke in this stream-of-consciousness wheel, each one I see leads to the same center: gratitude. I'm so happy to be married to you, too.