All joking aside, he cut me off after too many “dam” jokes at about 12:30 today.

You know, while visiting the Hoover Dam, you can’t help but mention the “dam” heat (120 degrees this afternoon), and the “dam” tourists (so, so many) and surely I could never leave out the “dam” coffee mug in the gift shop.

We would have to endure almost 5 hours in the car together to get home today, so after I had used the “dam” reference one last time, he (nicely) told me he couldn’t take it anymore.

He’d had enough of my “dam” jokes. (hee, hee)

So after walking to Arizona and back (the dam straddles the Nevada/Arizona border) in Sahara worthy heat, he decided he wanted to see the spillway channels. Only (dam) nerds and apparently my husband would care about the giant tunnels dug into the gorge walls on either side of the lake, so I blindly followed him across a suspiciously official looking parking lot into the Mojave Desert to find them. Heat from the sun and radiant heat from the black asphalt together made me wonder if my flip flops would melt before or after my sunglasses.

We stopped to take pictures and after having reached his (dam) goal, he suddenly realized how hot he was (something I’d known the whole time). He took off his hat to smooth his hair and realized the sweat dripping. “It’s hot!”, he said. “‘Dam’ hot,” I told him.

He didn’t laugh. That’s about the time he cut me off.

I realized we might have to pee on our t-shirts and wear them like turbans to preserve core body temperature like Bear Grylss. Or, maybe I’d been watching too much Man vs. Wild.

Regardless, he led the way and we ended up back at the snack bar just in time to avoid dehydration and sunstroke.

I kept thinking, “I followed this guy into the ‘dam’ desert just to see a big hole in the ground.”

But when we got inside, he let me sit down at a table under the air conditioning vent while he stood in an unbearably long line to buy bottles of water for us.

Because that’s just the kind of guy he is.

The kind of guy who will patiently explain hydroelectric turbines and want me to be just as excited as he is. The kind of guy who will drag his wife in 120 plus degree heat into the desert to find an old tunnel in the rock. The kind of man who would stand in a hot, sweaty line to get his wife a drink of water.

And I love him for it.
“Dam” right, I do.

On Thursday morning, some time around 4:30, came my daily wake-up call. Some people have alarms, others have roosters; I have my larger-than-is-necessary cat who sits at the top of my stairs and cries. I say “cry” because it does sound like a baby crying and every vet who has ever seen her comments on her, ummm, verbosity. She is a “talker” for a cat and lets everyone know.

So she cries to be let through the child gate just so she can plop her heavy body on my face. And if nobody lets her over the gate, she will wail and moan for the next hour. Every morning. Opening the gate is Chad’s job. It just is. My job is to nudge him. His job is to get up and let her through. That’s just how it is. No words are exchanged; it is just an unspoken arrangement. Its like squashing bugs and unclogging toilets. Its just what he does in our house.

Until yesterday. I nudge. He gets up and GRUMBLES! He says something; I know he utters words, even in the form of a sentence, but they are muffled and I can’t hear them. Maybe they aren’t really muffled coming from his mouth (I had the quilt over my head), but they are definitely indistinct when they reach my ears. So I don’t HEAR any of the words he actually says.

But, I do hear the tone. Let’s just all be fair and say that anyone who must get out of bed that early for a fat cat will be unhappy. Beat together irritation and sarcasm, and then fold in a little confusion and bitterness; that was about it. I heard this, of course, through the quilt, and without the words, I knew exactly what he was saying. These were fighting words.

In all honesty and in attempts at authenticity, I would normally be mad, carry the anger in my sleep, wake up irritated and the day would already be toast before it began. But instead, in my sleepy stupor, I just smiled and fell back asleep with the cat’s rear end far too close to my face.

When we later woke up, he (I’m sure) had no recollection of the early-morning-grumble and I didn’t care. I wasn’t angry and even though I remembered the TONE, I didn’t hear the words, and really, it didn’t matter anyway. I knew he was tired and I didn’t blame him for being unhappy. I wasn’t the one jumping up out of bed to heave our fat cat over the man-made fence.

For one brief instant, I was able to decide to let it slide, not to call him to account for a grumpy tone (a tone I am sure I take with him way too often). I hate keeping accounts anyway. So, small victory for me (not letting anger win) and large victory for the cat! Thank you, sweetheart, for getting up!

Between the altar and the door…

What gets lost between humilty and apology and understanding, and then the life that follows? There is so often a huge gap between surrender and contrition and everything that comes after. What happens in between, in the meanwhile?

So, I am sorry, my dear, for losing something between last night and this morning. The coveted alone time that we spent, laughing and listening seemed so far away when I got angry at you before the sun even woke up. Sometime in my short night, in my five expensive hours of sleep, I lost the smile in my eyes and heartfelt hand-holding; I exchanged it for anger, and quickness and frenzy.

I will try to live at the altar, the surrender-place, in the deepness and slowness of love. Nothing in return from you is needed.

Sometimes I don’t realize that amazing friend I have in you, perhaps, maybe because you have become so familiar to me. As if we were in some strange way, the same person. No book I could ever right would be able to put the things that have happened in proper words. So our words are shared between us in silence, and in laughter and in eyes that have no need for speaking.

You captured my heart even before you became a father. So, because of the way you love our daughters, you are my hero.

My grandfather has been quoted to say that he was “outnumbered and outvoted” in his house of women. Because of the burdens you bear for your three girls (four if you count the cat), you are my hero.

Because of the way you have continued to love me, even when it has been close to impossible, you are my hero.

Because of your spontaneous-soul and your wild-humor, I love you. And you are my hero.

Heroes are hard to come by, and I have found mine.