I’ve been with the same woman for the last four and a half years, give or take, and it never ceases to amaze me how adored she makes me feel.  I can tell you from experience that it’s the little things that matter the most.  When she holds my hand while we watch TV or when we’re riding in the car.  How every morning when I drop her off at work she kisses me goodbye, just so I know she loves me. Oh, and especially when she bakes me chocolate chip cookies.  She could choose to bake anything else in her cookbook, but over and over again, she makes cookies, because she knows they are my favorite.  I’ve asked her before, why a beautiful woman like her would have anything to do with me, but she just laughs and tells me I must be crazy if I can’t see it for myself.   

We don’t have a very exciting life.  Neither one of us are international drug dealers or federal agents or even wealthy philanthropists that don’t need to work for a living.  We’re just regular people, with regular eight to five gigs, who come home after work and cook, watch TV, and then go to bed.  Not much changes with us on a day-to-day basis and both of us like it that way.  What do we do with all of this time you ask?  We talk, a lot, about everything under the sun.  Most of our conversations consist of her rambling while I listen and for some reason this suites us fine.  I like listening to her talk; it soothes me almost like listening to music.  I adore the little gestures she makes when she talks with her hands and her body language that’s readable from a mile away.  Then when we have run out of things to say, we are pleased just to sit with one another and enjoy the fact that we’re together.

“If I were an animal, which one do you think I would be?” I asked her one time.  I waited patiently knowing that she would pick something grand.  Perhaps a bear because of my size, or a panther because, well who wouldn’t love to be likened to a panther?

“A bumble bee”, she answered with a little nod.

“A bumble bee?”  I could feel my ego deflate.

“Yeah, you know how scientifically they aren’t supposed to be able to fly.”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, it doesn’t occur to them that they aren’t supposed to so they do anyway.  You’re like that.”

“How do you figure that?”

“I’ve seen you do some great things and I think it’s because it doesn’t occur to you that you shouldn’t be able to.”

That short conversation opened up my eyes to something that I hadn’t noticed before.  She really thinks that I can do anything.  I’d like to believe she thinks that within reason, but I’m not so sure.  I look back on the supposedly wonderful things that I have done and I just don’t see it.  Then a new fear grips me.  I am not afraid of much, just spiders and murky water, but even those fears are manageable to a degree.  This fear is different; it’s never ending and all encompassing.  It’s the fear that one day I won’t live up to her expectations, that one day I’ll let her down. 

Immediately I send out an oath, straight from my soul, that I will never let that happen.  So I fix things, and help anyway I can, without even thinking of whether or not I should.  Every time she gives me that look, the look that says “make it better”.  The one look in all of her arsenal that I will not ever deny, even if it means my death.  I don’t know if she is aware of the power she holds over me or not.  But, she is a lady, and even if she knew, she wouldn’t tell.

 

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