A Very Good Man Has A Birthday

I took this picture in Cozumel on Christmas Eve in 2017. Eight years ago. And I swear to you- he has not changed one bit. 
Well, not in looks, anyway. He may be a little grouchier. Not much though. And if he is, it's probably because I'm not as sweet as I used to be. 

Good Lord. We've spent 41 birthdays together. We were just talking about how, when we got married at the age of thirty, we couldn't even begin to imagine that we'd still be celebrating birthdays with each other for 41 years. 
We would have laughed and laughed. 
And here's the thing- that forty-one years has flown by in the time it takes one of Ero's arrows to be pulled from a quiver and shot through a heart. 
Have a little life, make a little love, take a little nap, there you are. 
Could we please slow it down for the rest of our life together? Stretch out whatever time we have so that each and every moment is frozen, framed and made memorable? 
Can we learn to be here now? To quit thinking about how it's going to be when this happens or that is accomplished or things get more simple, less complicated...easier? 
Damn but we humans want to rush towards the future with all of the urgency of someone on the interstate who desperately has to pee, looking for the next exit with a gas station. Why do we do this? Why can't we be more mindful, more able to be here now, more cognizant of the fact that in truth and reality we can ONLY live in the present? 

Ah well. The cynic in me reminds me that no matter when or how or in whatever state of mind we reach that exit, it only means that all of our memories, our feelings, our thoughts, will become nothing more than some absolutely unexplainable bits of energy if we are lucky, and that no one is going to be able to access much of that. Or any of it. I mean, if our journals and diaries and blogs and books and songs and paintings and recipes and poems survive, parts of us will be left behind for others to ponder if they want to but let's face it- the living have their own lives to live and although the lives of those they loved may be vaguely interesting to them, they will not be of great importance unless we are Sir Isaac Newton or Linus Pauling or Frida Kahlo or Harriet Tubman or Bessie Smith. 
Or Keith Richards. 
Just checking to see if you're paying attention but, well, yeah. 

And so it goes. The universe does not care at all. What matters is that we do pay attention to that which forms and informs our days, our thoughts, our lives, our love. That we try to pass on the knowledge that we may have acquired in whatever years we are given. That we are aware, in these years and days and minutes, of what we have learned and been given. 

And that includes loving the ones we love. If there is a higher power that I believe in, it would be love. Not the "sending love" kind. Not the "oh I love that" kind of love. 
The kind of love that we feel might burst our hearts when we first hold our babies or when we realize we have found the person we want to spend our lives with or the kind where we watch a sunset and our hearts expand almost big enough to take in the whole universe or the kind where we can gaze at the milky way over the Gulf of Mexico and be knocked out by the knowledge of how small we are and yet, how we somehow must matter. 

I have no idea what I'm talking about but I think what I may be trying to say is that loving my husband is a kind of love that is deep enough to matter in the whole scheme of things, on both the molecular and universal levels. 

But honestly, I don't know shit. 

I do know, however, that I sure am glad Glen Moon was born seventy-one years ago and that he loves me. 

Happy birthday, my darling. You have changed the very structure of my heart, my soul, my life. 

Love (truly)...Your wife