When I was in college, I…

When I was in college, I remember sitting around with my girlfriends and talking about the guys we'd dated. How if we could take this one's good looks, the other one's brains, that one's sense of humor, together, we could construct the perfect man. It was fun to daydream, even though we knew there was no such thing as the perfect guy. I didn't expect to learn that if you're lucky, you find someone who isn't in any way perfect, but is surprisingly perfect for you.

Kev and I don't have a formal anniversary, but around May 1st or so, we tend to mark when we met and started (rather vaguely) dating. Nineteen years now, almost half my life. The last few years have been harder than expected -- one thing after another has been harder than I thought it would be. But they would have been almost unbearable if I hadn't been doing it all with him. I can't tell you how intensely I'm looking forward to a long, lazy summer with Kev. I can taste it. And with luck, many decades thereafter.

On an oddly related note, I wrote a poem on Sunday. Tomorrow is moving day, and most of the boxes are mostly packed. So it seems a good day to post this.

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Despite everything
the house isn't perfect.

I spent two hours
sitting in my back yard
reading a book
waiting for the floors to dry
and realized, again
it won't be perfect.

The neighbors are too close.
The apartments are too tall.
There is no forest to disappear into
behind the backyard
as at my parents' house.

There's an alley instead,
not even a driveway safe enough
for the children to ride their small bikes.

There is too much shade in the front
for chili peppers or tomatoes
and not enough yard in back
for an orchard of fruit trees
a blackberry bramble.

There are a hundred things
we gave up
when we chose this house
not quite in the city
not at all in the country.

But there are a thousand things
we gained.

You can't have everything;
some choices
are mutually exclusive.

So even though I expect
that for the first few months
we'll be noticing the things
we don't have in this house

I also expect
we will love all the things
we do.