Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love.
~ M. Scott Peck
Last evening, before crashing on my pillow for a night of highly-anticipated, restful sleep, I spent some time chatting up my girls, talking about things we wanted to do this week. I’m on a bit of a vacation and the boys will be out of town, so it’s our chance to hang out and do things they like. Things that don’t happen on a PS3. My oldest told me she planned on starting the week by making a huge omelet for mom on Sunday morning, since it’s her birthday.
What?!
I had completely forgotten.
Again.
In my defense, there has been a running joke for years between my wife and I that her real birthday is on July 26th. I messed it up badly back when we first started dating, and all these years later . . . well, there it is.
And so I didn’t sleep too well. Instead, I tossed and turned, trying to think of some way I could make this day special, in spite of the fact that we will be busy spending the day running our boys to their various activities. This will have to do . . .
Her name is Garsy, but she will always be Booples to me. Which is short for Honeybooples, a name a created just for her over lunch one day during our college years. I have no clue where it came from, if perhaps I subconsciously lifted it from somewhere or maybe overheard it once, but it has stuck.
Booples, can you bring me some toilet paper?
Booples, where are my keys?
Booples, I’ll give you a nickel for some fried eggs and potatoes.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Like all lasting terms of endearment, it is our name. No one else calls her that, and no one ever will.
My Booples . . .
It has been, and still is, my pleasure to watch you grow. As a person. As a mom. As a wife and friend.
To look at all the pictures you take. Even with a relatively cheap camera, you capture the dance of this crazy world of ours, seeing the most beautiful of movements even in the silent, wispy things.
To take your hand, wherever we are, and feel the familiarity of your touch. To still feel the rush that accompanies even the smallest peck.
To just know – instinctively, born from years of companionship – what stirs, and breaks, your heart. To care for those you care for, and love those you have chosen to love.
To see that sparkle, and listen to you give that sparkle words, when you share something you’ve read in a book or discovered along this road. To live vicariously, and grow beyond my own boundaries, through your blessed perspective.
To awaken each day with you curled up beside me, your hand draped over my chest, holding me close. You cling tightly, reminding me that you will always be here, no matter what each minute brings. Yet not too tightly, never smothering, but everpresent. Flesh of my flesh.
At the end of this day, as at the end of every day, you and I will still be together. We will be different. We will have grown a bit. Maybe a lot. Yet we will be, in so many ways, the same. For that, for all of this, and for who you are, and have become, and are becoming, I am so in love with you still.
My Booples . . .
