In Which I Meet Romance

The Girl and The Boy have gone away for an ENTIRE WEEK, so we're on vacation here in the Singer household.

And may I just say this? We are SO loving it.

Tonight I went out to dinner with a man that looked strangely familiar to me. I knew I'd seen him somewhere before, but I just couldn't put a name to the face.

That is, until he asked if I had my debit card so that I could pay for dinner. Then I figured out where it was we'd met. It was about seventeen years ago. I'd been wearing a long white dress, and he had a tux...there were flowers involved...oh yes, now it's coming back to me....

And the debit card bit? Just one of the many reasons why I love this man the way I do after seventeen years of marriage. We're WAY past the pretense stage. Romance has become much more than candy and flowers. Romance has EVOLVED.

Oh yes MA'AM, it has.

And I don't mean just because we can pass gas in front of each other or anything.

Ahem.

In 2003 a tornado struck our neighborhood. Hubster and I were home alone, and made it to the basement with only minutes to spare. When we came up top afterwards, the landscape of our entire yard had changed. Oh, the house was still there and in fairly good shape, but we lost most of the mature trees we had. An oak, four feet in diameter. A locust. A hard maple. Half of a fully-grown burr oak landed in our driveway. The winds picked up a branch that was eight inches in diameter and twelve feet long, and drove it at a diagonal into the ground until only four feet of it was visible. Our woodpile destroyed the heat pump. Compared to others, though, our damage was minor. Two blocks behind us entire houses were blown away, never to be seen again.

We were blessed.

In the midst of the cleanup, Hubster's back went out. He couldn't walk, much less drag branches or cut up wood. He couldn't rake. He couldn't even sit up. All he could do was lie on the floor and moan.

We both felt helpless at that point, so I called the city to get volunteer help in. They sent us four volunteers, and with their help and the help of a couple of friends I was able to get almost everything cleaned up within a week. Finally I felt as though I'd imposed enough. The volunteers and friends left, but there was still a lot to do.

I raked and bundled and raked and bagged and raked some more. I had blisters upon blisters and I was so tired and hot I thought I would keel over, but I had to get the work done before the city crews made their final rounds to pick up debris. Just when I thought I couldn't go a single step more, the back door opened.

Out hobbled Hubster, a wet washrag in one hand and a huge glass of ice water in the other. It took everything he had to be able to get that for me, but he did it. It was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it.

And that, Ladies and Gents, is ROMANCE.

So while the children are gone this week, we've been rediscovering a bit of the OTHER kind of romance. A little eating out. A little holding hands. A little more closeness than we can normally have when the kids are here.

I'll take this over a tornado any day.