Dancing To Dreams

The baby chicks are still alive and I swear, a lot bigger than they were yesterday. I am going to be amazed if Mr. Moon gets that coop built by the time they need it. But you could lose a lot of money underestimating Mr. Moon. Believe me. He's still here with me after 26 years and no one would have bet on that.

The hippie and the jock?
The mainly vegetarian and the hunter?
The too-tall and the not?
The broken and the whole?

How in the world did we get together? How did we determine we would fit?
And most importantly: how has he stuck it out all these years?
Well, I don't know but looking around yesterday, I was more than glad he did.

Coming as I did from a family broken to its core, oozing unhappiness and fear, I think it was my most fervent dream to break apart from all that was and try to create a family of my own where there was love in every corner of the room. Where, despite every human imperfection and experience, love would be there to cushion all blows, to shed light into every darkness, to lend support to every journey.

And what inner voice spoke up when this tall man asked me to dance and said, "Yes. He's the one who can make that dream come true?" Where did that bit of wisdom come from that made me say yes, hold out my hand, take his in mine?

I literally don't know how I had it in me. If, as a wise counselor once told me, we all go to relationship school in our parents house, then I was fucked.

But no. Somehow there was wisdom in me. Perhaps in my very genes, untouched by the way I'd been raised, there was such knowledge, such intelligence, such true vision that I decided to dance with him.

We've been dancing a long time now. Sometimes we dance like angels. Sometimes we dance like stumbling fools. Sometimes we dance as if we were deaf and we can't hear the music and our feet barely know how to move and our hands reach out and miss each other and sometimes we dance like there is no music but the music of two hearts beating in perfect Yes, Yes, Yes.

He took me, broken and he loved me. He took my children, not his own, and with his love made them trust him. He gave me children and he has supported us all, he has done that with grace and care. He has opened his arms to this world of mine and held us tightly.

He has given me my dream.

And he builds chicken coops. And he thanks me for every meal. And he listens to my fears and he supports me in my journey and he walks like his daddy now, across the yard when he comes in after working outside all day, and my heart leaps up, again and again and I dance across the yard to kiss him.

And that's all I have to say today except for this: When we work in the garden, I kneel and pull out the tiniest weeds. I love that tedious, picky work wherein hours go by and there is hardly any visible result at all.
Not Mr. Moon, though. He gets out the tiller and fires it up, going through the dirt like crazy, and in a few minutes, it's all done. The ground is soft and ready to receive the new plants, the water, the sun.

And somehow I knew inside me that night he asked me to dance that we would both work in such different ways, but that our goal was the same- to make way for life and to tend it.

And we do. And we dance. And children giggle and smile when we do.

And all my dreams have come true. At least the ones that really matter.
And they are still coming true, even dreams I did not know I had. Over and over again, I wake to realize I had more dreams than I knew and that even they are coming true.