From the Very Beginning

The Mister called me last night, outraged that I claimed to have cankles in my last post. He says that I DO NOT have them, and that I should edit my post to remove the offending remark. I love that he’s stickin’ up for me, even if it’s against . . . well . . . me.

This proves one thing. And it’s not that I have lovely, slender ankles. It’s that love is blind. Not every guy in the world thinks my curves are slammin’, but I’m so lucky that the Mister does. Once I had someone ask whether the Mister is a leg man. I replied, “If he were, do you think he’d be dating me?!” Tee hee.

Mama says, “I may not be perfect, but parts of me are excellent.” So true. I know a few people who wouldn’t like the furriness of the Mister’s back, or the fact that you can almost fit the remote control in his ginormous belly button. Me, I like that he’s warm and cuddly, and his belly button makes me laugh. I’m grinning right now just thinking about it.

I really believe that there’s someone out there for everyone. Sometimes it just takes a little time to find said person. I’ve dated some real doozies, and stuck it out in those bad relationships because I thought that love wasn’t supposed to be easy. My last relationship was with a really nice guy who wasn’t right for me (and I wasn’t right for him). It literally never occurred to me that the effort we had to exert to keep the relationship going shouldn’t have been necessary.

That’s not to say that love is always easy. Fortunately I have two excellent models of happy marriages (Mama and Mr. Mama; Pop and Mrs. Pop). Add to that the Mister’s parents (Momma Mac and Mac Daddy). These relationships prove that love, like a well-rooted tree, is natural. It grows and bears fruit without trying. There may be hard winters that the tree must endure, but there are also optimistic springs and lush summers. So while love may not be easy, it is natural. My feelings for the Mister are the very first time that love ever felt right. Magical. Inevitable.

A commercial I heard this morning said, “If your girl is one in a million, then there are seven thousand other versions of her in the world.” I’m certainly not going to say that there is only one person for everyone in this world. I’ve seen widows who had wonderful first marriages find love a second time. While the concept of a one-and-only soul mate might not account for these stories, my feelings for the Mister have convinced me that the person or people you are meant to love are imprinted in your soul. In the words of the poet Rumi:

The moment I heard my first love story I began seeking you,
not realizing the search was useless.
Lovers don't meet somewhere along the way.
They're in one another's souls from the beginning.

When I look into my soul, I see that the Mister has been there all along.