Comings And Goings

 I checked to see how many times I have brought this up before. The answer was twice, which seems like a pretty fair number considering the totality of the time we have spent together. Not necessarily you and me, dear reader, but my lovely wife. The one who helped conspire to drop our wedding day just nine days before her birthday. I understand that this doesn't give me a lot of room to complain, what with Father's Day and my birthday having a tendency to overlap on a regular basis, but there you go.

Which wasn't what I was going to bring up, but it will all come together if you trust in the way things stack up around here. I was going to mention, once again, the poem I wrote so very many years ago now that included the line "you can come and go in my life." Yes, I know that I was lining up to be disappointed, at some level, but it turns out those were words that the girl I was chasing at the time needed to hear. And the way things have worked out, it's turned out to be true, but maybe not to the degree that would have made me crazy uncomfortable. 

Yes, I have a tendency to cling. To things. Ideas. People. And memories. Those don't come and go so much in my world. And I am fortunate now to have this great big stack of birthday memories to share with my wife, who came home from our honeymoon to a birthday party complete with Ren and Stimpy and a watermelon cake. 

There have been other birthdays that have necessarily had an element of distance between us. She travels, my wife. She loves the life of adventure. As a contrast, she also fully enjoys the comforts of home. This would include her stodgy husband who often prefers to stick around the house and prepare for her eventual return. It was a refrain around our house for many years: Mommy always comes back. This would soothe the jangled nerves of our little boy who was every bit as ensconced in his home as his father. 

But we all grow older, and up, and out. And the excitement available here is just not enough to keep everyone down on the farm all the time. But it's a nice farm, and it's a pretty happy place to which one can return. Which, of course, was all part of my evil plan way back when. I continue to give this gift of freedom with the quiet assumption that this will have a bungee effect of bringing her back to me. Meanwhile, I am grateful for all the times I have shaken off the lethargy and joined her on those trips off into the void. Because I have begun to figure this thing out: I don't think we are actually travelling in space so much anymore as in time. As we grow old together, I think of an episode of Bewitched, in which Darrin begins to fret about how his wife the witch will deal with his pending decrepitude. Samantha Stephens was already a few hundred years old when she met her husband, and the concern was that he would grow old and gray, and eventually alone. As a gesture of love, Sam shows how she intends to grow old with her mortal hubby. A very sweet sacrifice, in my sitcom estimation. And so it goes with my little water nymph. 

She does come and go in my life, but it's our life. Together. And that's fine. Happy birthday to my friend, my confidant and favorite audience.