I occasionally look back on the time it took me to get past his rejection as a blink of time in the grand scheme of things, laughing at myself for taking it so seriously all those years ago.  As for the “English teacher”, it took me years to realize that his inconsiderate, cowardly act, while unappreciated at the time, was the best thing he could have done for me.  It took at least six months to get over him and quite a bit longer to stop hating him, but at that moment in my time, I was devastated and failed to appreciate the service he had just done for me.  Over the years, however, I’ve resisted the temptation to send him a thank you card.  I have become grateful to him over time for being more sensible than I was.

The man I would marry paid for many of the English teacher’s mistakes, but he took it in stride, proving to me at an early age that not all men are unkind.  I do wish he had a greater appreciation for the clothes hamper as a good storage receptacle for his dirty socks, rather than the bedroom floor, but no one is perfect.  It does enable me to exercise my flair for the unnecessary, telling him that our union has elevated me to the exalted rank of Certified Slobologist.  He also has a very bad habit of interrupting me when I am talking.  I haven’t finished a sentence with him in the room in twenty years.  I often tell him, “Stop inter…”  

He shrugs off my criticism as easily as he does the necessity for hampers, but I love my husband more than I ever thought I could.  Not in the profound manner a mother loves a child, or giddy girlish love that is all too often described as being at first sight, accentuated with fireworks and nausea, but the deepest love I imagine any two people who have spent their entire adult lives learning to trust and tolerate one another could experience.  A love that has brought us through the happiest and saddest of times, the births and the deaths, the firsts and the lasts, the hidden and the found, the best and worst of conditions, the most traumatic realizations, the degradation of aging, and our worst fears experienced together, knowing one of us must survive the other, but still willing to go the distance.  No, there may not have been any fireworks, or even a queasy stomach…just laughter and tears for the entire ride and an admission that I would take it again and again if given the chance.  This man completes my existence and affords me the confident luxury of knowing that he feels I complete his.