The honeymoon phase

(This post is made from home, waiting for the doctor's office to open.)

IT'S finally fall up here in desert country.  The weather's unseasonably warm, but the sun slants just in that special way in the mornings and evenings (which is the only time I get to see it) that means autumn has arrived.  There is no better time of year. 

Fall for me has always been a season of renewal, of re-creation.  A time for cleaning house and preparing for the winter.  September and October herald canning jars, school supplies, and the crock pot.  The warm colors of fallen leaves, pumpkins and sunset warm the cockles of my heart, and I get excited over the first sightings of wooly mittens and scarves.  I always feel a stirring inside me during these months, as if the clock has finally ticked over and I have come out of my summer stupor.  That switch means a deep-seated craving for baking, planting, closet-cleaning (and its companion, wardrobe-rotating), and the bringing in and battening down of everything outside.  I am at my best in the fall.  I'm bi-seasonal: down in the hot months, when there's nothing to do but endure the heat and twiddle your thumbs and make mad dashes between the house and the yard to administer life-support to the gasping plant life; and up in the cool ones, when my creativity and drive and mood soar.  I have SAD in reverse.

Fall has always heralded some of the major changes in my life.  Two years ago, it meant that I made the greatest leap of faith I could have ever imagined.  My best friend in the world, whom I had watched writhing in so much emotional pain that I was afraid I would lose him before he was able to disengage from the situation he was in, finally made his break.  I was so proud of him. I had just made my own, after several years and several abortive attempts, and my little family was scarred from my own bad choices.  He looked at me and thought "I can", and amazingly enough, he could.  And in the course of one fateful fall evening, he stood on the edge of that big, dark chasm of uncertainty and made the jump.  And with my heart in my throat, knowing nothing else but that it felt very, very right, I said "Just come." 

And he did, with nothing but an overnight bag and a beat up car.  I opened the front door that night to the rest of my life.  We were battered and broken, scarred and not quite sure we were going to survive.  I didn't consult anyone else.  The kids didn't know him, and he didn't know them.  It was an uneasy situation for a while.  But from that very first night it was as if there had been a missing piece in our clockwork for a long time, enough to  make the machinery run out of time, and we had finally found it.  I did a dirty to my children by handling things the way I did, so suddenly, and for that I feel ashamed.  But I will never, ever, regret the decision.  What B brought to my house, and what we gave back to him, was sanity, acceptance, faith and love.  After those first couple of awkward months, what grew and blossomed here was far, far beyond anything I could ever have imagined.  I did not know families like this existed. 

I did not know a love like this existed.

It was awkward all the way around.  We had to handle it at home, with our extended families, and at work.  But after the initial whispers, they said "You all are so much happier, healthier.  It's amazing.."  B brought not only my little family back together, but brought us back to my own family, and introduced us to the vast and wonderful tribe that is his own. 

The guys at work teased B for a long time.  "Oh, you're just in the honeymoon phase,"  they would tease him.  "You'll be over it soon."  But two years later, we are still living the honeymoon.  There have been tears, there have been disagreements, there have been outside troubles.  But what we have found for sure is a concrete foundation, which we build stronger every day.  I watch the younger couples fight, tooth and nail, with hurtful words, and I think about how bad it was like that for me before (and for B, in his own 'before') and the contrast with how we disagree.  Maybe it's that we're older, and are coming to this thing with the value of years of experience on what does not work.  Maybe it's that we are tired of the drama, and unwilling to do that all over again.  Or maybe it's that we value this thing far too much to break it into pieces with words.  For what reason that I was granted this chance, I don't know.  I do know that God must be tired of hearing my thankfulness by now.  It must be getting repetitive. 

I do know that what we have is enduring.  This is no temporary thing, and time has not paled it.  Some mornings I awake to find him already woken, lying there on the pillow beside me, smiling at me.  I say "What a lucky girl I am!"  When I catch sight of him in the hallway at work, turning a corner, my heart still beats fast.  He says I still take his breath away.  The honeymoon phase isn't over.  If we are lucky, and work hard at it, it will never end.