To My Husband

Dearest Michael,

I need to write a love letter to you, my husband. Sometimes love is very difficult. It is challenging and a roller coaster of ups and downs. Sort of like a blossom seeking sunlight at dawn only to stay closed because the cloud cover is so dark and forboding. Love, too, can hurt, but it can also fill us with memories and smiles. There is a lot of negitivity in this world. Too much. There need be none in my heart.

I remember the time we woke early and went to the concrete out walls at Loyola Beach. We sat and waited for the sun to rise, and when it did, we noticed thin gray clouds blocking it. It didn't matter. The day was calm and the waves were clam and we were calm, sitting together, listening to the herring gulls and the splash of the water on the sand. Do you remember when it became light enough, how you noticed your pants were filthy and we had to go back home so you could change to go to work?

I can remember when we were in the forest and you yelled for me to come back to where you were standing because there was something too beautiful to miss in the plants along the path's edge. Again and again you tricked me with this ploy, but I loved it. Each time I came running, you pointed out the photograph of me. You still carry it in your paper wallet. I know it's worn out and curling at the edge, but I remember.

I remember holding hands with you on the veranda at Montserrat Island as the sun settled into the ocean. I can still see the pinks and oranges and blues and grays as the sun slipped away. I can still feel your hand against mine. And do you remember when we decided to go lyming? It really was lame, but I was with you and I enjoyed the evening air, the atmosphere we created, silences between us and the conversation.

Who can forget the break wall at the lake near the university. We had blankets and we settled down the two of us and made love under them in the night, the moon watching, the waves touching the huge rocks, the herring gulls singing around us. Some college boys walked past, almost stepped on us, and this too added to the thrill of being with you.

One recent morning you joined me in bed curling your arms around me resting your hands gently below by breasts. I had my back to you and I felt your heart beating, your breath in my hair, your skin with my skin.

I'll never forget the night you named our new wall I designed and we put up together, "Our Wall of Love." That was something. And yes, even though it lays incomplete, the shelving not in place yet, the moulding not surrounding it, it gives me hope that everything does not need a completion date, but an opening for more and more and even more.

I loved the arrangment we created with the song, "Look Through the Window." I can feel the excitement of that song even now, not singing it, not even near the CD player to listen to it. There is an urgency in that song, a bit of romance, a prayer to god.

And I like that, too, how we pray together at night. You listen to me and you sometimes break in and I don't care because it always adds to everything good in our life--our children, our health, our interwining creativity.

There were moments we annoyed each other and injured each other and you did this badly--more than once. The flower blossom seeks the sun to open and I, too, look for guidance. You were there in the room letting me break your hand with all of my strength when both of our children were born. You sat with me after the second, me on a gurney bleeding and weak, but I remember you there.

We have the 45's Unit now and I'm hopeful. We have the beginnings of a blog and I'm hopeful. We have the memoirs you began for me and I'm hopeful. We have the fight against stupidity next door and for that I am very hopeful.

Go home and listen to "Manchild." Think of me. I will listen to "Look Past the Window," and I'll think of you. Somewhere we will meet and think of each other.

I had to write you this love letter, dear husband. I just needed you to know this.

Deborah