She knows it (I hope)...after having known her for seventeen years and change, well, she'd better know it. Still, it's important to reaffirm (a) that I love her and (b) how much I love her, some place where everybody can (c) it.
Her birthday offers a convenient excuse.
Eva has had a succession of bad years. Shortly after her birthday last year, she hit rock bottom and started her long climb up. It's been nothing short of inspiring to watch her, hand over hand, ascending. Don't get me wrong, she's not doing this alone. She has the unfailing support of Mark and I, and she needs it on occasion. But the strength, the determination, the necessary softness and critical hardness: that's all her.
Eva's not where she once was; she may never scale the heights she once did. But she's scaling entirely different heights now, heights of love and compassion.
People say I have the most open heart they've ever encountered. That's nice, but it's only because they don't know Eva. She has an open heart that -- well, I won't say it puts mine to shame, but put it this way: I had the basics down...she's offered, by the model of her life lived, several refinements. I know now, if ever I had doubted, that when love is augmented in my world, her love will expand as well to enfold it. I know now, if ever I had doubted, that Eva is fully in tune with abundance and compersion and all those other concepts that have become so important to me. In fact, it could as easily be said that I'm fully in tune with her vision of life and love.
There's much more to Eva, of course, than her full embrace of polyamory. She has always possessed a restless, curious mind. It has NOT been reduced by her battles with complications from bariatric surgery or her anxiety, only...redirected. She used to be frighteningly multi-tracked, needing six or seven stimuli at once to keep her brain occupied. Now two different things at once can overwhelm her...but when she gives one problem her full attention, she still comes at it from seemingly every angle at once, including angles from inside the problem itself, quantum angles from different dimensions...
The most impressive thing about my wife, to me, is her CALMNESS. This is something she is wilfully cultivating. As she gradually adjusts from being in seventeen places in time and space at once to being here/now in the moment that is, that calmness only grows. And it radiates. Both Mark and I have noted that people grow in her presence. That Eva can broadcast peace and tranquility even though she lives with generalized anxiety is really no mean feat.
I have no idea what's ahead for either of us in the coming year, although I can say that whatever it is, Eva will face it, and face it down, if necessary, with her typical grace and strength.
Eva, you are my constant. Others have cycled and will cycle in and out, all of them important and cherished for themselves (something you have helped crystallize in me), but you are my rock, my anchor partner who keeps me centered and grounded and fully in touch with life and love. I am honoured beyond words and humbled beyond understanding that you have chosen me to share your life's trials and triumphs with.
I love you, love.
I love you.
Happy birthday.
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