anniversaries

My Husband Gives Hickeys


To me by the way. He is not in the business of hickey placement on anyone other than me. Just wanted to clear that up from the get-go.

 

When first we met, in person, and things got heated (okay, burst into flames), I made mention of the fact that I bruise pretty easily. Being a high school teacher at the time, I didn’t need to show up at work with hickeys.  Correction. I didn’t want to show up at work with noticeable love bites on my neck. (An aside here, I love when Olympia Dukakis’s character rags on her grown daughter, played by Cher, for having “love bites” on her neck the morning after she has been shagging mightily with her fiancé’s younger brother ( You… you got a love bite on your neck. He’s coming back this morning, what’s the matter with you? You’re life’s going down the toilet! Cover up that damn thing! Come on, put some make-up on it!). It is an awesome mother/daughter exchange and my favorite movie by far, which is weird given the fact that it came out nearly two decades before I became a widow myself -Cher’s character is a widow – FYI). Okay, back to topic. I didn’t want my students to see aggressive kissing evidence on my neck. Not because I was not entitled, as grown woman, to engage in consensual lovemaking with my boyfriend, and then fiancé, but because I wasn’t married and the kids knew it. No matter what you say to kids about the difference between adults who can take care of themselves engaging in sex and teenagers – who are still trying to either pull their heads out of their asses or wipe the shit from the eyes  –  it still pays to claim the moral high ground literally with them. This applies even when you aren’t, in fact, being all that moral. Teens will do what you do only because everything that comes out of your mouth sounds like, “Blah, blah, blah and blah.” That’s why I had colleagues who had miserable times with their students. They were rude and bossy and couldn’t figure out why they got that back in kind. And it’s simple. They do as you do. So fake it, even if you aren’t doing what you are telling them they should be.  The second reason I didn’t want love bites, is that I didn’t want to be teased by any of the adults that I knew. Co-workers mostly. Not that I didn’t get a little ribbing about the whirl-wind romance and the whole Internet meet-up thing, but there are just some things I considered too much information. Really?! You ask. You?! To which I reply – don’t mock. On the screen I am fearless, but in person I am so shy and introverted you might wonder if I write this stuff or someone is just pretending to be me. (You might also ask why anyone would want to pretend to be me but that isn’t today’s topic.)

 

I noticed the bruises last night when I got up to pee. Damned middle-aged thing but also, I don’t find UTI’s fun. I hoped that they were just the result of the recentness and would fade by morning, but alas – no. Of course by morning, I had forgotten and in my rush to get my workout done, I took off for the gym without even combing my bed head out. I must have looked the sight dropping off my little girl at the child minding. Disheveled and sporting love bites. Left no doubt as to what I had been up to the night before (or even that morning for all they knew). Rob redirected my attention to them at lunch. And being reminded, I scolded him. I also recalled for him the fact that he once told me that he didn’t give hickeys because they were crass and immature. That was in response to my original warning about the ease with which I bruise. He was sheepish but ultimately unrepentant and tried to conveniently weasel out of the, now, numerous instances of hickyage he has bestowed on me since I retired from teaching last June. You might wonder if I have been able to leave my mark on him, but sadly, I have not. His swarthy Hungarian heritage protects him and I, apparently, haven’t the bite to match my bark. (By the way, I do not bark at any time during sex. It was just a metaphor).

 

Since I had errands to run in Sherwood Park after dropping Katy at school, I needed to camouflage said love bites. I don’t own much by way of make-up. I don’t use foundation because it just accentuates wrinkles. So, I took my hair out of its workout bun and hoped it would hide the “evidence” or at the very least shadow it a bit. Later as I chatted with Rob, he reminded me again that he has never given me a single hickey and that any love marks were probably the work of an incubus. You know that you are a fortunate woman indeed when your husband can come up with a cover story like that one.

 

I guess that I shouldn’t mind. After all, I could be one of those women whose husbands prefer porn to the real thing or don’t take the time to do a thorough even job to even leave a mark. It could be one of those 15 or 20 minute once a week jobs that even have an assigned day of the week  like lawn mowing or putting out the trash. Hickeys are a sign of heat and being lost in flames. I should wear my hair up on purpose on days like today. Flaunt them like a new tattoo. 

Idaho Falls: It’s Been a Year Now


When Rob and I first began dancing with the idea of meeting in person, we were still just friends. He and Cheryl were trying to organize a Bago in Manitoba for July and I made up my mind to attend, so we could meet. Well, that quickly went from meeting at the Bago to his picking me up at the airport to my flying to Edmonton first and driving out to Manitoba with him. I guess we should have known at that point we were already more than friends.

Once the cat, who was already out of the bag and sitting there watching us expectantly, was formally acknowledged we began planning our March trip that eventually became Devils Den. But even knowing we would be seeing each other then did not stop us from plotting an  earlier meeting. And then came Idaho Falls. Rob and Shelley had met a couple at the cancer clinic in Mexico who lived just outside of Idaho Falls. Tee has breast cancer and Rob wanted to visit her as she wasn’t doing well. He was also taking her some things of Shelley’s, and could I manage to fly out to spend the weekend with him there? 

My best friend, Vicki, wouldn’t even let me use Katy as an excuse not to go. She barely took a breath before agreeing to assume responsibility for my child for the weekend and with that – I was on my way.

I remember posting about my upcoming trip on the board, as so many people did and still do. I remember all the cautionary advice and pooh-poohing of the notion that Rob and I could have gotten to know each other via email, IM and the phone. I remember specifically that I didn’t ask for any advice and I didn’t take any that was given. I was beyond polling the board. But, I was still nervous. How could I not be? There is much one can learn about another person via their words – in any form, but there is a tangibleness about physical presence that goes beyond knowing on an intellectual level. I actually felt as though I was missing him in that concrete way even before that night in the airport when I saw him and rushed into his arms. 

We’d speculated quite a bit about those first moments and each scenario became a bit more intimate. Our first kiss in those first moments was interrupted by my mother. She called Rob on his cell phone and wanted to know if I had arrived yet. It was a bit like having your one of your folks walk in on you as a teenager making out or something. It didn’t break the mood though and we smooched away the waiting for luggage to the point where a TSA officer broke us up to inquire if the last bags standing were in fact ours.

Rob likes to joke now that the woman he sometimes can’t get to stop talking barely strung more than a couple of sentences together that first weekend. But I was just drinking him in with all my senses to a point where I was overwhelmed. 

A year later and we are sitting in our robes at the dining room table, me blogging and him scouring the net for a used car for Jordan and Katy in the living room chattering away with her imaginary friends while watching cartoons. All that is sandwiched in between then and now is our history together. History. Wow. You dream about being swept away. And love. Intimacy. Never does it occur to you that there comes a point where the newness is the comfy familiar and you are sharing an existence with touchstones, high and low points, and a future to chart together.

Happy Anniversary my Sasquatch lover. I love you, always.

Valentine’s Day


 A Valentine for My Husband, Rob

 

Every woman needs a Sasquatch of her own

Life being incomplete without one

Earth signs are best 

but at least born in an Oxen year

Able to shoulder all manner of burden

Physical and Emotional

Soft 

but with firm and unyielding flesh 

and principles

Impish, teasing,

able to giggle and explain (nearly) everything

Confident of being able to do (nearly) anything

Beacon bright blue eyes, 

furry all over 

and with very warm feet

Every woman needs a Sasquatch of her own

Life being incomplete without one

 
Today is a Second. It is our second Valentine’s Day as a couple. To anyone who hasn’t been widowed, this would be hard to understand, but to those of us who have experienced the death of our most loved one, it shouldn’t be very hard at all. During the first year of widowhood, there are Firsts. The first birthdays: theirs, children’s, yours that the person is not there to help celebrate. The first wedding anniversary that doesn’t count towards the total. Holidays whose meanings and traditions will change because of their absence. Rob and I have done all those things as widowed people. But today is a special day for us because today is the first Second of our life together. We have been together for over a year. The birthdays and holidays from this point on will be ones we have celebrated as the two of us and it is such a wonderful feeling. Seconds become thirds and fourths and a decade followed by another one. A damn long time.
 
Happy Valentine’s Day my lover. Here’s to our “second” and the damn long time to come.