If you haven't read Gary Turner's interview over on Frank Paynter's site, go do it. Right now. That Porridge Boy is amazing. Looky what he made today. I'm laughing myself sick over here. And I never even knew the Turners shared the Sessum's love for Glengarry Glen Ross. Ah, well, read the interview for the famous exchange between Alec Baldwin and the sales team.
Speaking of Love, he's home. He's really really home. And as I tried to figure the right thing to blog about it today, I decided I can't capture it in one post. I can't tell you in one post what it was like standing behind the recently-installed spectator galley (well that's what it feels like) at the top of the escalators at Atlanta Hartsfield, where everyone and their Asian brother was waiting for Korean Air Flight 032 to arrive. I can't tell you how many times I had to say, "Jenna, be patient," as for more than two hours she fidgeted and looked expectantly at every tall-dark-and-handsome who rose into view from the belly of the airport, coming up the escalator from down below where the trains run.
She waited, sat, stood, shuffled, jumped, ran, sat, stood, shuffled, whined, picked, sat, stood, swayed, stomped, shrugged, and I think kicked a couple of times. I stood at the ready with digial camera in hand, wondering if he would ever come, if the plane had even landed. Minutes turned to a half hour turned to an hour turned to an hour-and-a-half, and some two hours after starting our vigil it happened: I saw that forehead I know so well, the eyes, then the face, chest, "JENNA LOOK!" she was already on the run. Into his arms. Me snapping a couple of shots before attacking him myself.
The biggest gift of marriage is familiarity and comfort, something that can turn into complacency so easily. Don't let it. Because the gift of comfort is picking up exactly where you left off. It's him standing in the kitchen saying, "I can't believe I'm finally home," and me saying, "I can't believe you were ever gone." It's sleeping next to the familiar rhythm that you're not sure isn't there until it's back. It's skin touching skin it knows. It's voice within voice, I hear myself in him.
It's waking up this morning without Jenna shoving me out of my dreams, instead coming to peacefully, hearing her downstairs on the computer with her father laughing at the chutes and ladders game and knowing I can close my eyes again for the first morning in nearly four months. It's coffee with lots of sweetner and cream. It's driving and talking--stories from there, from here--later, after Jenna's asleep, it's more sharing and laughter, it's hugging the pillow I'm laughing so hard. Then it's quiet and skin touching skin that feels like home.
For one day I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders. Like my best friend just came to my side to lift this heavy burden onto his shoulders for a while, or at least to share it with me so I can sit down on a rock once every now and then, catch my breath, and just look at the sky. It's me stretched out on the couch feeling like lead and air at once, because I can. No, it's not forever, because the responsibilities of this world won't let it be, but for today I had no burdens. Only joy.
