My Wife

Today is my favorite day of the year, May 12th.  I've explained the weird reasons for this elsewhere, but for me, this is the best day by far on the calendar.  It's only fitting, then, that on the best day of the year I introduce to readers the best person I know, the love of my life, my wife Karen.

Karen and I met under unusual circumstances.  Sadly, for me, we met later in life.  My life would have been so different and so much better had I met her when we were younger. 

My wife is the best person I'll ever know.  That's what made me fall in love with her.  Yes, she's beautiful and sexy.  She's smarter than most people I know who have advanced college degrees. She's fun and witty and playful and everything a man could want in a mate.  But it's truly her spirit that took hold of my being and opened my eyes to what life and love could truly be.

Ours was an unorthodox meeting.  I remember reading the great, crusty Chicagoan columnist Mike Royko, when writing about his recently departed wife, telling people that they'd met in second grade and that they shouldn't knock it because it could and did happen to them.   Likewise, our meeting was the stuff that makes for great reading and better movies, all the more because of its unbelieveability.

If our meeting was unorthodox and unbelievable, our courtship was even moreso.  We'd write a book about it but most people would think we'd made it up.  When finally we came to the realization that we belonged together, the storms that hit us were incessant and buffeting.  Through it all, Karen held her composure and her class and never wavered in her commitment to me or to us.  Could I have done anything less?

When finally we were able to marry -- only circumstances prevented us from doing it sooner -- we had to write a letter about why we loved the other person and wanted to marry him/her.  (As with many things in our shared life, despite the fact that we had to do this for the minister who was going to marry us who was going so use fragments of the letters in his service for our wedding...but forgot to read the letters and told us so during the ceremony...).  When I wrote mine, I remember telling him that Karen is able to find the beauty in things that aren't popularly thought of as beautiful -- bulldogs, bonzai trees and me.  She sees what others consider broken, quaint at best, and gloms on to them, knowing in her heart that intrinsically there is something, someone to be loved.

Karen is thoughtful to a fault -- we laugh that she got the thoughtful gene in her family -- and is kind. She's the best friend a person can ever have and the best enemy one could have, because in either case, the person knows exactly from where she's coming.  She's passionate -- just talk politics with her for two minutes -- and nurturing.  She's a little girl and she's a fiery woman.  She's the world's greatest grandmother, which leads me to believe that had we had children together, she would have been the world's greatest mother as well.  She probably is for her son, but I never got to experience that.  Not having a full life with Karen is one of the greatest regrets of my life.

So on this Mother's Day, I'm proud to tell the world that I love my wife, Karen.  She's the person around whom this family revolves.  I love her with all my heart and will love her beyond the end of time.  I hope everyone is as fortunate as I am to have found a special woman with whom to share his life.  I just hope for younger men, you find your wife much sooner than I found mine, so you can have many more years of bliss.

Happy Mother's Day, sweetheart.  I love you more than you can ever know.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles