Silver

This past year has been rough on many romantic relationships.

Perhaps it was the copious and unprecedented amounts of time together huddled at home. Few opportunities to be social with others. Plenty of access to alcohol but zero access to the gym. Maybe it was sudden financial upheaval or unrelenting political banter; so much so that even those who tended to agree, began disagreeing. For some, it might have been the idea of our country crumbling underneath us while death skulked around every corner. 

A few of of our committed friends have faced one other in the tumult and said, "I'm done." 

We've been emotionally gutted like fish, enduring sickness, a loss of faith, foundations shaken to the core, as we pored over 24 hour news documenting lonely hospital bedsides and health care workers with expressions from mournful wails to defeated silences. It was hard leaving the house and walking by the empty and naked tennis courts, netless and chained on our way to several, (probably germ-filled), stores to find a squashed package of overpriced not-our-brand of toilet paper being stocked by a dog-tired but devoted employee who'd probably rather be home. It was enough to make us take an exhausted, sorry look at life and ask, "Is this where I want to die?" or "Is this who I want to live with when things get back to normal?"

Thankfully, for me and my husband, our answer is yes.

I want to squeeze his hand. I want to pet all the dogs as we walk and guess the prices of houses for sale. I want to peer into the discarded junk box on the side of the road while he gently pulls my arm to leave it. I want to make grocery lists with his steak and my tofu. I want to debate world events. I want to make sure we have the coffee he likes and linger for a moment over the perfect headprint on his pillowcase before changing the sheets.

He wants to wash my car. I want to wash his clothes. 

When he is done saving the world, he comes to me for healing. When I am tired of healing the world, I turn to him for saving. 

Like two sides of the same coin, we are forged in heat. We are silver.  

He is heads. Plowing through anything in life that presents a challenge, noble and wise, steadfast and strong. Sharp roman profile, he is our engine. 

I am tails. Observational, I hold situations and people and things for too long, my unremitting emotions smoothing them like stones in a raging river. Soft bottom, I am our caboose. 

If we are the Chinese lion, he's up front, dipping and diving in a swirl of fast moving color, while I am rushing to keep up but also simultaneously anchoring us; one simpatico movement of thrum and choreography.

He can accomplish twenty things to my single task but when his twenty are complete, he returns to me with his shoulders aching and his countenance nearly bested by the burdens of this life. It is then that I become the bird who turns to ash, loved ones kept safe under her wings in the fire.

When the one task I have been working on has spun me up, down and sideways like a seed on the wind, he plucks me out of the air and buries me deep in the soil of his stability so that I can live to grow another flower. 

The lockdown made him determined and manic. It made me pensive and worried. He ran. I stood like my feet were stuck in a bucket of cement. I helped him slow down. He helped me speed up. In our twenty fifth year together, we are emerging from the friction of our last trip around the sun, a silver anniversary celebration on the horizon. Corrosive-resistant, we dwell in the pocket of this life, tumbling around in the dark, spent and recirculated. 

Precious and priceless. 

Silver.

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