Good Lovin'

In a perfect world there would be no war, no famine, no divorce, no hate crimes, and no flat tires. My clean shirt would stay clean....all day. Relationships would be easy and my job would include a paycheck. Because sanity ain't cheap! And that's what I do. I'm the sanity super hero. I could eat Dr. Phil for breakfast!

My little clan is always on the verge of bodily, emotional, or mental disaster. And to keep that in check I must juggle my bag of tricks around and around and around. I must calmly remove the scissors from the 2 yr old, with the sucker in her mouth, that is running through the house drooling. I must remind the crying 6 year old that we can fix her necklace and it is NOT the end of the world. I have to stay patient while the 8 yr old interrupts me, yet again, during math class to tell me she doesn't understand what we have been working on for 15 minutes, even though I've explained it EVERY way I can think of. And, all of this while mantaining a vibrant relationship with the man of my dreams....my irreplacable husband.

Why is it so hard sometimes? It all seems so easy at 20, when all of the "hard" stuff is just a theory that some elderly lady is telling you will happen one day. "Oh, yeah. No, problem. I'm sure it will be hard, but we can do it."

And we CAN do it. And it will work. But, is it hard? Yes, because, when all is said and done...there is a lot more work than play when you are a "real" adult. Bills don't stop coming in the mail. Kids don't sleep through the night for the first......10 years. And date night is a MUST even when we both feel like sitting on the couch and watching Little Mermaid for the fourteenth time.

I am sick of the Mars and Venus style books about men and women. All of them focus on how different the sexes are. The similarities are overlooked a lot. We ALL want attention and interest given when we are explaining how our day went, wether it's about bridge embutments or the 5 yr old losing her first tooth. We all want to be heard and found interesting. It's universal. It's simple. It's almost impossible some days! We all want to be left alone and we all want to NOT be left alone. We all want to be attractive and we all want to find someone attractive. We all want to have a little money to spend on stuff and not to have to explain why. (Grocery money DOES NOT count!) We all want to have friends to laugh with. We all want to be that friend to each other. We don't want a cerfew. We don't want to feel like we are living at home with Mom and Dad. We are free humans. But it's very tempting to try and exercise some strange sort of control over our mate because EVERYTHING they do effects us.

It's hard to share everything. Ask my 2 yr old. It's engrained in us to want it to ourselves! It's not natural to give...it's supernatural. And that's what LOVE is all about. When we are in the courting stage it's pretty easy. Because we show off the best of the best. But after a time, we all get selfish. That's the stuff to work on. That's the stuff that makes or breaks us. And I want to make it! I want to be best friends and I want to treat my Husband like he's the coolest dude on earth, because he IS. We chose each other out of all the rest. That's amazing. Somewhere along the way our paths brought us to the same little canyon town in Riggins, Idaho and we met and made beautiful children!

So as the heat rises in my chest because I made dinner and it's getting cold and I'm waiting, wondering what's taking him so long to get home. And as I'm imagining that he's probably off b.s.ing with someone about horn hunting and I am wanting a break from the last 13 hrs of being super-mommy-doctor-psychologist...I remind myself again that the only change I can make in this situation is my attutude. And when he gets back and I find out he had to work an extra hour and then stopped to pick up a movie and ice cream for the kids after paying a bill.....I can tuck my tail and sheepishly say..."Hi, honey! Would you like me to warm up your plate?"

This all seems so personal, but it's really not. We ALL go through it. That is why Oprah even has a job! It is the reason that The Eagles had so many #1 hits. It is the cause of Danielle Steele selling millions of mushy steamy novels to housewives. It is why beer sales soar at the end of long work weeks. It is the reason Shakespear killed off so many people in his stories they made us read in highschool. Love saves us and drives us insane!

If we could remember the simple rules that we used at the beginning of the relationship we'd be just fine:

Maintain eye contact and genuine interest in what your partner is saying.

Hold hands all the time.

Write each other love notes.

Make each other tapes....(okay, it's cd's now)...with all the good love songs.

Go on drives.

Snuggle all night long.

Laugh at the little things that go wrong.

Don't get mad.

Tell each other that you love each other....and mean it.

Hold your farts.

Laugh if you forget to hold them!

Watch movies that your partner likes even if they are not your favorite.

Share the remote.

Don't interrupt.

Act like you havn't heard EVERY single story that they have to tell.

Go everywhere together.

Brag about how cool they are.

It's all these little things that we did at the beginning of our lives together that bonded us and made us the best of friends. I overlooked any imperfections. That's how I want my husband to look at me. Remember how it really is beneath all the day to day hum drum. It's magical!

Travis and I were at a fair in a small town in Northern Idaho, in our 20's, when we'd only been together a year or so. We met this old, smiley little couple that were celebrating their 60 year anniversary. We loved them right away. The live music was so loud and they were just tapping their feet and truly enjoying everything and everybody. We asked them, "So what is the secret to staying together, happily married for 60 years?" The old man said, "Laughter. Just laugh about it all and don't get mad." And his wife added, "And, you've gotta talk about things. Let each other know how you feel."

I kept that in my heart that night. Travis and I talked about them a lot after that. I want to be that way. Happy and open and truthful. I want to be 85 and enjoying a lifetime of being together and raising our children and seeing them grow and listening to live music with my hearing aid turned on high. I want to see a legacy of love grow from two kids that really didn't know how hard it would be...or how worth it. And man is it worth it!