By Gray Lily | July 2, 2009

Dr. Marcia Fieldstone (Radio Talk Show Host): Tell me what was so special about your wife?

Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks’ character): Well, how long is your program? Well, it was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together… and I knew it. I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home… only to no home I’d ever known… I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car and I knew. It was like… magic.

A combination of magic and coming home. That has always been what my soul believes is love. I have kept this quote and that concept in my heart for fifteen years and it was not until Michael put his lips to mine a little over a year ago that I finally felt that feeling. Magic and coming home, but to no home I’ve ever known.

“When I’m with you, I feel like I’m home,” I whispered into Michael’s ear. My cheek was soft against the scratchiness of his. A day without shaving had left him with the velcro touch my youngest finds so fascinating. To me it is just warmth, reassurance, and love.

“We are home,” he whispered back, leaning into my kisses. I sighed softly and kissed his cheek again. The noise and lights of the fast food restaurant stilled for just a moment. My heart slowed and the worries that I hold so diligently in front of myself slipped back. With him I am safe, and loved, and home. Now all I have to do is figure out how to recreate that precise feeling when I am not with him - the very depth and breadth and height of it, the way it encompasses my entire world.

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Lipstick

By Gray Lily | July 1, 2009

“If you’re for-real going to take pictures I need to do my hair and make-up,” I said. Michael was fiddling with his camera, getting all of the pieces and parts connected just the way he wanted them.

“Go ahead,” he nodded, glancing up at me. He was sitting on the couch, I was standing next to him, watching the older girl finish her lunch at the table.

After a few minutes upstairs I came down with my hair down and my everyday make-up on.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Come over here so I can see you in the sunlight… You look fine except the lipstick needs to be different,” he said, looking me over in that way that still makes my stomach flip-flop anxiously.

“Ok. What shade would you like?” I asked.

“What is that? I couldn’t hear you past that ‘Ok’,” he said, focusing his attention on the camera in his lap.

I bit my lip for half a second, glanced just as quickly at my daughter, and bit the bullet.

“Yes, Sir. What shade would you like?” I’m pretty sure my voice was loud enough for the girl to hear it but she never stopped nibbling on her strawberry. She didn’t seem to care.

“Something darker,” Michael replied.

“Yes, Sir.”

The rest of the afternoon I caught myself. Every time I wanted to say “Ok” I replaced it with a “Yes Sir”. The girls must have heard me say it a dozen times and not once did they even give me a funny look. Although they don’t always use them, they understand manners, and they seem perfectly fine with the fact that Michael and I retain some amount of formality in our interactions. I have been known to demand that they respond with a “Yes Ma’am” so perhaps they just figure Michael is particular about how he is addressed. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop them from starting a sentence with “Hey” or “Miiiii…chael” in that sing-songy intonation little girls use when they want attention.

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Cookies

By Gray Lily | June 29, 2009

The girls were pestering me for dessert after lunch. I was standing firm in my belief that fast food is enough of a treat in and of itself that no dessert is required. Michael was watching all of it, playing with the younger girl, distracting her to get her to finish her meal.

As we made our way to the exit, Michael took the opportunity to stop at the counter and buy two chocolate chip cookies. I ignored him, and the girls’ excited giggles when they realized what he had in the bag.

“Mama, Michael has cookies. Can we have a cookie, please?” they chorused in the car.

I bit my lip for a minute. I knew he had bought the cookies for them and was fully intending to let them eat them at home. I was teasingly annoyed at him for indulging them but recognized his desire to win them over, as well as his own sweet tooth looking for kindred souls.

“Well… I don’t know…” I started.

“Yes, you can have a cookie,” Michael interjected.

I pinched his thigh out of sight of the girls and he turned to me with an innocent look.

“What? I did my time as the bad guy,” he said, smiling broadly.

“Oh, I see how you are. You raised your kids right so now you’re set on spoiling mine. Is that it?” I asked with a kiss. There was no way I could be mad at any of them. I was just thankful that they all seem to enjoy and appreciate each other, cookies or no cookies.

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Pause

By Gray Lily | June 28, 2009

The older girl is asleep (due mostly to fever and cough) in the tent on the living room floor. Michael is asleep (due mostly to an erratic and unpredictable work schedule) under my head on the couch. The younger girl is playing quietly in the dining room. I am lying on the couch reading “Revolutionary Road” and I am happy.

That notion gives me pause for a moment. I am happy.

I have not been sure of late what happiness is or if I have ever known such a state. I have wondered what it would take to achieve this mythical place of emotional adjustment. I remember being content at certain times in my life, and joyful at others, but I have doubted that long-lasting contentment with flavors of happiness woven in around the edges was something I could find within and around myself.

Having Michael and my girls here on a quiet weekend afternoon has proved to be a very close approximation of what I understand and envision happiness to be. I am relaxed emotionally and physically without anxiety of schedule, fear of vulnerability, or worry about my self. I feel safe, protected, accomplished, competent, and in the words of the inimitable Prince: beautiful, loved, and blessed.

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Okay

By Gray Lily | June 25, 2009

“The other day, when we were at the movie theater before the movie started, I said ‘Yeah’ or ‘Yes’ or something and you made me say ‘Yes Sir’. Why did you do that?” Michael and I were laying in bed, somewhere in between rolling around and getting naked.

The question had been wandering around in my brain for a day or so. I couldn’t figure out a logical reason why that particular instance had warranted such a proper response when the topic of discussion had been lighthearted chatter and we’d been virtually alone. It seemed an odd moment to bring me back in line when nothing of substance followed and nothing of import had led to it.

“You said ‘Okay’. I hate it when people I’m talking to say that. It means they’re not listening or not taking what I say seriously,” he said. “It’s a personal thing. One of my quirks.”

I thought back to the moment, trying unsuccessfully to figure out if I had been indeed been distracted or less than serious about my response. I had no idea what we were talking about so the recollections never became clear.

I do remember feeling the pulse of electricity that went through my body when Michael murmured the phrase he expected me to repeat. Because we so often interact in a completely vanilla and seemingly-equal manner, these quick knife-thrusts of protocol and subservience always send a tingle up my spine. I can be reminded by the feel of his hand on the back of my as he leads me through a crowd, the sound of his voice as he demands my answer to a question, the arch of an eyebrow as he awaits a response or reaction. It can be brought forcefully to my attention in the blink of an eye that I belong to him, without question or reprieve.

And no matter the method of his reminder, I always feel the soul-deep answer and acknowledgment of my psyche accepting that it is so.

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