RAMBLINGS

My Rough Boy

Nothing much was different when I woke up this morning. I peered over at you and smiled when I noticed how your silver streaks were beginning to cover the peppery hair that were getting lost underneath. It made me sad to realize how that beautiful head of dark hair was disappearing almost right before my eyes. I noticed how many more lines were showing up around your eyes and how many more furrows had formed around your mouth. I looked at your lips, and I grinned when I was reminded by how many times they had kissed mine, and how they were the only lips I have wanted to kiss for the past million years. I scrutinized every inch of your face before I looked past the now, and I saw the man I had met so many years ago.

The man with the dark, wild hair and hazel eyes. The firm, lean and muscular young nineteen-year-old that so effortlessly swept me off my feet from the moment I laid my eyes on him. I remember that day as though it was just yesterday. It was an autumn day somewhere between me being a girl and becoming a woman. Through the crowd, I saw you get on your motorcycle before you zipped up your rough boy leather jacket. You looked past the guys, and you looked past the girls. Almost as though your eyes knew who’s they wanted to see, they stopped by me, and they never left me. And there we were, two strangers staring at each other with a hundred people around us. When your index finger beckoned for me to come closer, I was so powerless to turn and walk away from you.

You swept me up, told me to hold on tight, and drove off into the night with me on the motorcycle behind you. Little did I know that at that very moment, I was riding off into an adventure that was to last a lifetime. But we’ve had our moments. We’ve had our thorns amongst the roses. We’ve had our tempestuous waves, and we had our tempers flare. In reality, it was my temper and always only mine that flared up. We lost ten years, but we gained twenty after that. We made a home, we raised children, and we’ve carved out beautiful lives. You carved out a magnificent world for me to live in. A place I was safe in, somewhere I was loved and somewhere, I could lay my head down and cry when I needed to.

You loved me. You caught up each tear that would spill from my eyes, and built me a chamber in your heart, where I could store my precious memories in and never apologize for them. You just loved me. Just because you did. Not because I could be anything spectacular or wonderful someday. Not because I was someone important or someone that mattered much. You just loved me. You. Loved. Me. You loved me, and there has never been one day that I doubted that and doubted you. Not once, did I question your love or devotion to me. You’ve given our sons strong foundations to build on, and you’ve taught our daughters of their value in this world. You’ve led by example by how you treated me, and you have never failed any of us, not even once.

You stand back as you let me step forward and shine. You see to it that I have enough space around me to find that which makes my soul happy. You take my hand when I am not really paying attention, and you hold firmly onto it. You stand so closely behind me, just in case I lose my balance and fall. You walk beside me, yet you are always just a little behind me. Then, almost at the same time, you stand in front of me, and you guard me as I make my mistakes. You let me try and you let me fail, and then you pick up the pieces of me and for me. You never scold or berate me, and you have never uttered as much as an I told you so.

I value each cup of coffee that would wait on my nightstand each morning without fail. I value each meal you would serve me when my days are too long and far too rough. I value the store trips you make for me, and I cherish the little things you do because those are the things that have become so important to me. The chocolates on my pillow for no reason at all. A flower picked from our garden, for no reason at all. Nothing is too much, and effort is who you are, for no reason at all and for nothing in return.

So, as I lay staring at you while you sleep for just another five more minutes, I embrace and fall madly in love with each line on your face. I can almost tell a story for every single one of them. Did a line show up the day I drove 400 miles on my own, and you couldn’t reach me on the road? Did another one appear the day a truck hit our son’s car? Was another line because of the day a car hit another son’s motorcycle? Did that long, deep one come from the day our daughter crashed hers? Those frown lines, were they implanted the day our house accidentally burnt down, almost to the ground? I don’t know which line belongs with which story, but what I do know is, a dozen lines are there because you spent so many days and so many nights working tirelessly to give us a home, to give us a decent life, to put our children through school and to send them all on their way.

I look at your hands, and the traces of all your hard work are there, just so that mine don’t have to look like that. Are the grooves around your mouth because you kept quiet too many times when you so desperately wanted to say something? Did your silver streaks multiply when you sat up so many nights before, waiting for a child to return home safely? Or are some there because you drove around so many nights looking for our young and wild rough boys of our own? You are a story. Your face, your body and your hair tells of a man that made a queen out of a simple village girl. They tell of a man that raised his girls as princesses. They tell of a man that made men out of rough boys. They tell of a man that stood quietly in the background, so that others could stand out and shine. And, I know that years from now, I will count more lines, more grooves and I will no longer find one single peppered hair on your head, but I will never not see that young nineteen-year-old that swept me up and took me on a journey I never saw coming.

An adventure nothing could prepare me for, but one I would never have wanted any other way. I will love you, years from now, just as I loved you then and just as I love you now. And someday, when we sit on that much dreamed of porch overlooking our Christmas trees, I hope that you will still bring me a flower from our garden.

With love,

Alice VL

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