Drive All Night

We had  a lot of rain and wind (and a bit of thunder though no lightning) yesterday in these parts which came in handy as I was trying to recover from an outing on Thursday where I bit off more than I could chew in terms of physical demands. Last night I wound up taking Vicodin which has always (at least until now) made me ill but hasn't in the days subsequent to my most recent surgery.

I don't even say 'last surgery' because I know me and can guarantee this will not have been (the future pluperfect past tense of the verb? He shoots, he scores!) my last surgery in this life because that's how I am.

And as I thought about it yesterday while the rains fell and I stared out the window and watched the street in front of my house fill up with young people hurrying to the cars and their weekends as the uppers at Norwich Free Academy left campus, I was forced to concede that the way I live, and it's the only way I know how, is a trial or often wordless sorrow for the woman I love, my wife, Sigrid.

Yesterday I argued with myself, an attempted rationalization really, that I am not a surprise package which is my way of pointing out that she knew what she was letting herself  in for from the first time she returned my glance. And now, being less than a month until we celebrate 35 years of marriage (I know and have worked with people who have less time on earth than she and I in wedlock), I realize it must feel much longer for her.

And yet, she allows me to be me, more than that actually, she encourages me-for good and sometimes not so much for good. She manages the part of our lives that matters the most, the home and hearth, and allows me to be the "poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage."  To give my time to total strangers, to seek approval from people who care not enough to be bothered to learn my name and remains through all the failed dreams and the bad dreams as the only one in this life I can ever spend my life with.

If you have a  someone such as she, no words are necessary and if you do not, no words can explain.
-bill kenny