Healing

The man I love is a complicated man...but who isn't "complicated" in some way, right?
He cares for animals. He likes babies. Animals and babies seem to...gravitate to him, it's weird and I'm jealous. Old people like him, men and women both. I could go on and on of the things I love about him, but I won't. Who wants to hear that? (Rhetorical question)

There has, however, alwyas been something about him that worried me. He was always a little angry. Always a little unhappy with his cards in life...always walking and testing and missing something. Always just not calm enough. Rarely enough to really seem scary....but I say "rarely". And "rarely" happened. And it was. But this something was never enough to really point out what was the main problem...never enough to demand a change, a more equal give-and-take reather than just 'take'.

The man standing in my living room is a very different man. Same good qualities, same delicious smell and his kiss that takes my breath away...but he's melted somehow. (Are visions of The Wicked Witch going through your head now?) It's as if he's just softened, mushed up around the hard edges. I could use analogies. Like a big weight has lifted. An empty glass partly filled up. But I won't. (But I just did!)

And again, the melting (melting!) is not enough to pinpoint, nothing to comment on yet. The sense of haste, of urgency in everything this man did, everything he had in life, has gone. Poof. Poof! It's only been two days, and I can see it. I'll be cautious. But I'm relaxing myself, and I can see where I can do a little less "take" also. I'm giving just a little more, listening and discussing and just enjoying what we have, not enough to pinpoint. But enough.

As a mother, my heart and my children are the same. When they get stiitches, so does a little part of my heart. My heart tears up when one of them cries, with every retelling of schoolyard snubs, it bruises.The same heart, it sings along with my daughters at every bedtime song, and dances in each ballet recital. I had never thought about how a Dad would feel without his children. But now that I wonder...well, it seems stupid to even wonder.

I won't dare to hope that my life and relationship will be perfect from now on, I'm not expecting rainbows and sunshine and faeries all the fucking time, fersher.

But I can hope for the healing that happens when a Dad hugs his children for the first time in over five years, when he and his son watch a ppv UFC fight on a Saturday night. The healing that happens to every parent's heart when they put their child to bed at night and they know that tomorrow will bring more.