Home Alone

There was a time when I didn't like being at Red & Missy's house without them.  After all, I have my own place, it has all of MY stuff - their house was not comfortable to me unless they were there.  As a matter of fact, I felt downright awkward, surrounded by their shag carpet, chilly leather furniture, celery-green walls, and sticky cereal bowls left on the counter from the kids rushing out the door to school.  My apartment is dark and cavey, full of browns and burgundy and my own clutter.  I don't feel guilty cranking up the heat or the air conditioning to extreme levels, and the crusty dishes on the counter were left there by me!

Things have changed.

Kids have been around so infrequently that I have been spending more and more time at Red & Missy's (dog in tow, of course), and the things I was so uncomfortable with have somewhat faded into the background.  Family crises have also helped put things into perspective - nothing like a good ol' health crisis to force you to realize you were WAY too concerned with the color of the walls.

Also, I suppose we have entered that comfortable stage in a relationship where you don't have to fill every moment with conversation, or spend all of your non-work hours together.  Sometimes one or both of them need to be gone in the evening, and occasionally even I have a event that takes me off the couch, and we all survive.  I have learned to enjoy my time there alone.  Old movies and cozy blankets have become close friends.  I can always find popcorn, ice cream, and Doritos in the kitchen, and I love the bunnies in their yard, the sound of the palm trees in the wind, and the chirping birds (my apartment has upstairs gymnast neighbors, and a dumpster nearby - yuck).

The Red/Missy home has become a safe haven  - a place to relax and forget that there's any other place on earth I need to be.  Now if a walk-in closet would magically appear in their bedroom, and another 1500 square feet of floor space in the rest of the house...

Giving thanks.

The weather is getting chilly and by the time I leave work each day, it has become dark and foggy...  This time of year always makes me want to curl up on the couch under a fuzzy blanket with a good book.  I have been spending more time inside, cooking and reading and watching old movies.  As Thanksgiving approaches (at lightning speed), we are fortunate to have many people to see and things to do - not the traditional big group holiday gatherings that I grew up knowing, but invitations for smaller, more intimate get-togethers with our closest friends and family.

This year I have a new-found (and unexpected) sense of serenity.  I am thankful for the new friends and family I have made through Missy and Red, who have been so incredibly kind and accepting of me and our new life together.  These friends and family actively choose to stay in contact with us and remind us that they are only a phone call or car-ride away.  I am thankful for the awkward and stressful times the three of us have weathered over the past few years.  The difficult times have brought us closer together and made me more complete as an individual.  I am thankful for the opportunities that seem to present themselves; mostly to me, but to the group as well.  Just when things begin to feel hopeless, when I find myself seeing only closed doors and dead ends...unanticipated possibilities materialize in an extraordinary way that makes me feel the universe is rooting for us.  Lastly, I am most profoundly and humbly thankful for the two most incredible people I have ever had the good fortune to know and love.  Embarking on this journey with Missy and Red has been the single most intelligent decision I couldn't imagine myself making.

(Allow me to go on a brief tangent...)

We reminisce sometimes about what we now refer to as "The Propositioning" - the event that brought us together, and we giggle at the impossibility of it.  Red and I were out to lunch at a bright, loud restaurant full of rowdy kids, business people getting away for a quick bite, and senior citizens out for their daily dose of excitement.  Red (in a way that only he could do) boldly proposed this idea..."Hey, it has been nice getting back in touch with you - you're great!   You know who else is great?  My wife!  Hey, maybe we could all be great together!"  Recent events in my romantic life had seriously shaken everything I believed was true and right about marriage and relationships.  Besides, I felt that kind of bravery should be rewarded!  I said "Well, math was hard in high school and I didn't like it, so I put it off til the very end of college.  Then I discovered that (surprisingly) math wasn't hard anymore!"  So math was hard, then it wasn't.  I figured I could revisit the idea of kissing a girl, even though I didn't like it years ago...  And the rest is history.

I am thankful for karma making an impossible thing possible in my life.  I hope to celebrate this for the rest of my life.