January 7, 2015

In a previous entry I mentioned not quite in passing that I had turned toward God after getting together with my wife, Julie. If I were slightly more literal-minded in my conception of the divine, I might say that God sent Julie to me, but as it is impossible for me to imagine a supreme being putting "Find A Woman for JH" on the old To-Do List, I don't think I can manage that. But who knows, maybe it is my loss, to be so impoverished in my idea of God to think that he can't be bothered to find someone with whom I could share a love and a life for better or worse, in sickness and in health, etc. etc.

In any event, that is just one reason luck may not have anything to do with my being the self-proclaimed Luckiest Man in the USA. I suppose others have to do with the degree to which I was willing to take a chance going on twenty-three years ago. I remember feeling an eerie calm as I walked toward our meeting and a sense of peace as I told her I had an enormous crush on her. From there it was up to her to invite me to kiss her, which I did as Julee Cruise crooned "The Nightingale" from the Twin Peaks soundtrack in the background. To say that our first kiss was memorable is like pointing out the infinite number of stars in the night sky. It is obvious, thrilling, and sublime.

So much of a love affair depends on beginnings, and while that kiss was strictly speaking where ours began, the story which preceded it is improbable in the extreme. While Julie and I met when she was considerably younger than the day of our first kiss, if I am honest with myself, and yes, with this diary -- and what would be the point of lying now of all times -- I must confess that it seems our love was, for lack of a better word, destiny. At the same time, I have to wonder whether this belief has been layered on later in response to the scandal of having fallen in love with someone twenty years my junior. Yet finally it seems to me that such a link of the soul defies the ability to lie, just as it leaves our consciences clear.

And even as I assert the inevitability of our love story, again, if I am to be honest, I have to admit that it has not come without trial. It can be hard to believe that we deserve to be happy, yet at the end of the day, when Julie is there to take me by the hand and walk around the block to savor our lives together, it becomes impossible to conceive otherwise. This is the part where it is work to be in love, and while I remain not so keen on that notion, I must acknowledge that even the loveliest of flowers requires rainfall as well as sunlight in order to survive.

Which makes it all the sweeter that we have survived, Julie, as for the moment, I feel the need to address this diary directly to you. Do you remember how it felt in those first months to lie in bed together, side-by-side, holding hands as we drifted off to sleep, and to wake in the morning with fingers still entwined? I remember feeling as though I had experienced the most dizzying changes, yet that I was exactly where I belonged. Which is how I feel today, tomorrow, and always -- that I am exactly where I belong.