Insight

On our way home from swimming lessons, I couldn't resist calling my husband.

"Ball-and-chain,"  I said when he answered.  "You couldn't even leave me a note?  No Post-it declaration of love?"

"I tried to wake you up.  You were snoring."

"A likely story." 

Ben is looking a little quizzically at me, as I hang up, so I explain to him about "ball-and-chain."

"You know, how in the old days, they would put a ball and chain around a prisoner's ankle so they couldn't go anywhere, or not go anywhere quickly?  Well, you can tease your spouse by calling them your ball-and-chain.  Because..."

Nolan interjects at this point: "...because you're trapped."  He didn't beat an eyelash or look up from his game.  He just silently held his hand up to me for the high-five.

It was pretty funny.  And insightful, even for a twelve year old.

I'm hoping he has picked up on some of the more positive aspects of marriage too, but I think it's important that he also see it's not always a picnic. 

Because we all know it's not.  It's better to know that sometimes the little things like dishes in the sink make you snap; that you don't go through life always holding hands all googly-eyed. 

Sometimes, you look at your significant other, and the years melt away, that flip-flop in your stomach makes you pause.

Sometimes, you can't even look at your significant other without feeling homicidal and needing to leave the room.

It's like anything else in life, it has its good points and its bad points, and all points in between.

Today, it's 15 years for us.  If you count our dating, it's 24. 

The good points are there, and the bad points suck, but it's the points in between that I like the best.

The everyday things.

Like when I wake up just enough to tell him to have a good day. 

Like when he sneaks up behind me, puts his head on my shoulder, and tries to get in the way of what I'm doing.

Like when I stand out of his line of view, and watch him playing with the kids.

Like when we exchange the secret code; things I say that seem innocent but aren't, and he knows it.  ("I shaved my legs today." = you are so getting lucky)

Like he can look at me, know something is wrong, and get me to spill it with just the right way of asking me "what's up?".

All of the day to day adds up, and eventually, years go by.

In the blink of an eye.