Porch Light

By the time this publishes, I’ll be about to change planes at DFW, on my way to some of those fancy meetings that you have to take when you do jobs like mine in Corporate America.

At least, I think I will, if I did the time change and flight duration and all that jazz right at this time of night. Who knows. I do money, not actual math.

Anyway, it’s 9:00 here now, give or take. I should be finishing up my packing and shutting down for the few hours of sleep I’ll get before we have to leave at 1:30 AM to get me to the airport on time. Should be, but I’m not.

I’m not because I was struck by something simple and beautiful on my way home tonight. I took Sharkman to his dad’s to spend the night so that he didn’t have to get yanked out of bed at an ungodly unreasonable hour on a school morning to drive two-plus hours to the airport. I went alone, because Rhett had to get some sleep so that he can drive me to the airport at that ungodly unreasonable hour.

Poor Rhett, but more on that in a minute.

I don’t drive alone much anymore. I don’t drive much, period. Rhett drives when we go anywhere as a family. I mean, hello, professional driver. Why would I drive? (Unless we’re road-tripping and he wants a nap. Then there will be construction and a detour, and he’ll be snoring. It’s a universal law.)

I work from home. Pretty much the only time I leave the house is when a) I have a meeting, b) I have to go to Sharkman’s school for something, or c) I get pried away from my laptop by my boys, usually accompanied by threats of bodily removal of said laptop by force. When I do leave, it’s to go somewhere with them.

Driving alone is weird for me now. I used to drive for therapy; I liked nothing better than climbing behind the wheel and raising hell on a back road with the windows down and the radio blaring. But I’m a grownup now. Plus, I blog, so the need for therapy at high speeds with moderately self-destructive impulses has slackened somewhat.

I tell you that to tell you this.

It’s so dark and so flat, out here where we live, that you can see our porch light from miles off down the highway.

I have to say, that tiny little yellow glow gave me a sweet fuzzy feeling.

That light said “Here I am, here’s home!” It said, “Come on in, you know the way from here.” It said that there’s someone in my house, snug in bed, waiting for me because he loves me enough to leave the light on when I’m out in the dark.

That’s marriage. That’s family. That’s home.

Loving enough to put up with a week’s worth of hard-headed bitchiness. Loving enough to make a warm, safe space to come back to, over and over again, from any kind of distance. Loving enough to laugh, to cry, to talk and debate and discuss. Loving enough to make breakfast and dinner and fold 84,000 pairs of socks that always seem to end up mismatched anyway.

Loving enough to go to bed at 7:30 so you can get up and drive to an airport more than two hours away at 1:00 in the godforsaken morning so that your wife can do the job she works way too hard at even when she’s home.

I’m not an easy woman to love, much less live with, but he says it’s easy for him.

More than two years of knowing one another, and almost a year of marriage later, I’m learning to believe, finally.

I still have my moments. I still have redheaded weeks (sorry, darlin’, again). I still forget to compromise, forget to consider, forget to be gentle, forget to talk. I still stop breathing, occasionally, afraid I’ve broken something or said something that will somehow alter who we are together, and I freeze in panic.

But it happens less often.

I have more moments like tonight. Where I pull into a driveway, where the love of my life literally left a light on for me. I kiss him goodnight, and brush hair from his forehead, a little sad because I didn’t get to say “I love you” before he fell asleep. So I whisper it in his ear, where his dreams will hear me anyway. I fix the blankets so that when he kicks his foot out from under them, he won’t get tangled. I pat the bed so that Viking can come snuggle in and save my spot until I’m ready to lay down.

I start to pack my bags, and then I stop because the sweetness I’ve been blessed with needs someplace to go.

I remember to write out my gratitude, not because the world needs to read it, but because it gives us both something to look back at, years from now. A tangible piece of evidence that these feelings have existed this way. A snapshot of a life together that stands out in the busy swirl of activity.

I’m not always good at the day to day, but I’m glad I’ve gotten better at capturing these moments and holding them close.

I wouldn’t trade them for anything. That porch light – that’s my compass now. It points me home, not to the building we live in, but to the life we have.

Looking for more? Check out the joint blog, filled with gushy marital ad nauseum, at This Side of the High Speed Rodeo. You can also find me sounding off as a Guest Lesbian, at Card Carrying Lesbian, on my adventures as a transwife in an oh-so-straight world.