Love

Two years ago yesterday, sitting my parent's living room, my husband handed me a tiny blue box with a diamond ring inside.   There was nothing very romantic about the proposal, or any other part of our dating saga, but there was love, and tenderness, and joy.  He asked me if I would be his wife, but we had both known, for months, long before we had anything "official" going on between us, that he was the man I wanted to spend my life with.

No, there was never anything romantic.  There was never even the gushy mushy type of love between us.  No hearts skipping beats, no flowers, no chocolates, no romantic cards and late night I-love-yous.  We didn't believe in soul mates; my husband does not complete me.  I don't have a single love letter he's written, because he has never written any, and probably never will.  He doesn't have any little gifts or trinkets from me, because that just isn't the way we do things.  There was none of that.

There was just love.  Peace.  Joy.  Our relationship was very simple.  We were older when we got together; he was 25, I was 27.  Our parents whole heartedly approved, our friends just rolled their eyes and said, "I told you so."  We both had dated other people, brief relationships that just showed us what we wanted and didn't want.  We both had our acceptable traits and what we would not stand.  I would not marry a man who, otherwise perfect, had a temper.  He was not interested in a woman who would boss him around or make too many demands on his time(not in a bad way, he just wasn't going to marry a woman who demanded he went with her to Hobby Lobby when he could just as well stay at home).  We both knew that we needed partners who were involved in fire and EMS.  I was not going to tolerate a man who refused to help around the house. I wanted someone who was not overly intellectual or artsy, traits that tend to annoy me.  I wanted a simple man, who loved me and his family, who could work with his hands and fix things around the house, who would understand what drives me out of bed at 2 am in the cold winter morning for a structure fire, who helped around the house and cooked dinner sometimes and who was not going to be jealous or controlling or moody or tempermental.   

And, ladies, I got him.

There was no Cupid, no fireworks.  Only a recognition that this man that I'd been friends with for a while was the one that I wanted to share every moment of my life with.  Instead of fireworks, I looked at him one day across the room at work and thought, "Oh.  There you are."

And there he still is.  Happy two-year-engagement anniversary.