four years

“You do something to me

Something that simply mystifies me

Tell me, why should it be

You have the power to hypnotize me

Let me live ‘neath your spell

You do that voodoo that you do so well“

~bing crosby, singing my nana and poppy’s song, you do something to me

i researched some family songs for my brother’s wedding present, and the one that my nana and poppy loved, supplied by my mom, felt like one i could easily adopt for our anniversary mix cd this year. whether he is hauling in our christmas tree, letting the cat nest on top of the newspaper he was trying to read, or showing quinn how to do a proper push-up on the living room floor, there is some magic that happens to me that stops me in the middle of whatever task i was trying to accomplish.

and those are just the everyday things. then there are the moments, like when he gets up on stage and dances to come and get your love  in taming of the shrew that make me downright giddy. (track one on this year’s cd, of course.)

our interdependence has become a comfortable, well-worn pair of jeans of a routine, and it is anything but stagnant. we find ourselves fine-tuning the division of labor even still, like just yesterday when i discovered i don’t mind changing the vacuum cleaner bag, as long as he still handles everything else in the vacuuming department. i have gotten better at interpreting the grunts that are issued when i ask for the occasional child care favor as “yes of course i’ll hang out with quinn for you, love” and thank my lucky stars once again for the positive examples in my son’s life of a hard-working man and a loving, respectful relationship.

i wouldn’t say that this one has been an easy year, though the marathon of life’s little hiccups in our year one will always give any year a run for its money. it was already looking like coyote had some things in store for us early on in the year, and i am proud to say my prediction that we would be “definitely outlasting bad weather, and looking ahead to contented long days and abundant journeys ahead,” has proven itself to be accurate. as challenging as this year may have been, the overwhelming sense i feel is one of contentedness and abundance.

we have also, as predicted, kept our sense of humor, as coyote teaches, and we seem to always find a way to laugh at the situation, even when it is hard, like missing our pancakes, coming to difficult decisions about buying a house, or crossing our fingers about me finding a job. sharing one small driveway, we park and re-park each other’s vehicles on a regular basis, and while he can get our bumpers to nearly kiss, my truck backing skills usually involve a 10 foot gap, which is what happens when i back up until i am absolutely certain that i am going to hit something. the next morning when i walk him out to his truck for work, he thanks me for parking him part way to work, saving him part of his drive.

i’m gonna stay by you

you’re gonna stay by me

we ain’t gonna need to spell out

no D-I-V-O-R-C-E

we ain’t like tammy and george

we don’t sing them tunes

you and me we’re gonna be more like

johnny and june

~truckstop honeymoon

a lot of the songs on this year’s cd talk about dancing, mostly thanks to the come and get your love pandora station i listen to while i pipette dna. dancing isn’t something we regularly do, other than our once a year date at oregon country fair. (there’s a rising appalachia song on the cd, which is one we did actually dance to while dragonflies buzzed around our heads this summer). but i think of dancing more figuratively with us, the dance that ani difranco refers to (from way back a few cds ago now) “there is nothing like dancing our dance of give and take – one step forward, one step sideways, the helpless feeling when the earth shakes.” our daily dance: my cell phone alarm goes off, his clock radio clicks on some pink floyd or led zeppelin song, bart starts circumnavigating our bodies and homing in for a good petting session, rolling out of bed, him heading to shower, me heading to the kitchen to stir honey into his coffee and whip up a batch of biscuits and gravy, blowing him a kiss as he drives off to work, the healing power of that coming home hug, the kitties once again circling like rings around the planets of our ankles, then taking up posts as gargoyles to oversee our activities until we finally sit down and make laps for them to sit on, snuggling into bed, me shivering, him throwing off all covers but the sheet, laughing once again about our incompatible heat settings, the laughter warming me up to a survivable temperature, and re-setting my internal accumulated day’s worth of angst back to zero and we drift off to sleep again.

gargoyles

laps

Ah, home, let me go home
Home is wherever I’m with you
Ah, home, let me go home
Home is wherever I’m with you

~edward sharpe and the magnetic zeroes

we didn’t know where we would end up when this year started, but we knew we would be here together. and wherever that is, that’s where i call home.