My Beloved

I'd like to pay a special tribute today, on Mother's Day, to my beautiful wife. It's prompted by a nice comment to my last post by Oksana who posed two questions:

DanceFan -

I love reading your blog. I am curious, though, about one thing. I don't want to invade your privacy at all, but you write lyrically and beautifully about women that you hardly know. This is understandable - strippers are gorgeous, and meant to be objects of fantasy.

I guess I just wonder about the state of your marriage. NOT to make you feel guilty, or tell you what you're doing is wrong, because I don't believe there is anything bad with your activities. I just...I just would love to read a description of your wife. Is she as goddessly as the dancers you praise?

Once again, just curious. No judgment here.

I gave some thought to how to answer that. Blogs are a curious mix of public and privately anonymous. How much to reveal? My inclination is to just be honest as I've tried to be in all my posts.

My wife and I are just a normal mid 40's couple making do and a little worn by life. We've been together, dating and married, for 27 years now.

Is she "goddessly"? She's pretty, certainly, although she would dispute that. But it's hard to be objective about her as I am about the dancers that I meet so briefly in the dark. Because we've been part of each other's lives forever and I see her like no one else has or will.

We met in elementary school and I can see her in my mind's eye as a school girl. Honestly, I can.

We started dating in high school. And just like my musical tastes are partly stuck in those high school years in the late '70s(Boston, Foreigner, Dan Fogelberg, Jimmy Buffett) so my picture of her is stuck in those dating years. That beautiful shy girl in the braces and the Dorothy Hamil haircut. Not a star, always in the background. But beautiful in a quiet way. She wore Emeraude perfume back then and all it takes is a whiff of that scent and I'm transported back there. My one and only. We learned to kiss together. We learned intimacy together.

And we've stood together through the years. Me standing with her as I drove home every weekend in college to be with her. Her standing with me as we moved accross the globe to serve our country away from family. Together - years spent trying to have a family and knowing from the doctors that it would never happen, suffering losses in the attempt.

I certainly could not only describe her physically. She's truly a beautiful person. She is a fine faithful Christian woman. She grew up in the church and she exemplifies everything good about the church. And I love that about her. She has a pure heart. She inspires me. She loves her family and takes care to keep in touch with them.

Are we compatible in every way? No we're not. She would hate this blog, for example. But who could know when you pledge your selves to each other at 17 what kind of people you'll be when you're 40? But we're compatible enough. And we're deeply committed to each other. And after all these years we can still have pretty amazing sex!(See my post 2/15/04 - My Valentine)

About the state of our marriage: besieged. After 13 years of trying and failing to have children naturally, I am a father and she is a mother. We eventually became foster parents and we cared for many children, some of whom we adopted. They are beautiful and precious children, without physical disabilities. But the emotional and developmental issues we deal with are difficult beyond description. And she carries the brunt of it. I try to relieve it when I can. I often send her out for a movie in the evening or for a hotel for a weekend while I care for the kids. We haven't seen a movie together in 5 years. We can't get babysitters anymore. She struggles through difficult day after difficult day, lays with them each night until they wear out, and then falls in bed exhausted. And she wipes the slate clean each day and loves them .

It's a phase of our life together that we have to get through. So we escape now and then. Her to a movie or her garden, me to the club in the dark of the night and to this blog in the wee hours.

My wife. Is she a goddess? She would laugh at the question. My answer: she's not a goddess. (Nor am I a god!) But she is my bride. And she is an angel.

And she's a better mother than my kids know right now in their young life and I love her dearly. Happy Mother's Day.

Probably more than you wanted to know, Oksana!