Remember

Married love is different kind of pining. It's made up of laundry and yard work and buying time with each other. Not grand sweeping gestures. Just small ones. Very important, but very small gestures.

Married love is not what you expect. It's keeping up with the thread of time. Watching your own reflection in the eyes of another fragile human being. Watching your strength and your weaknesses ebb and flow. Seeing all the possibilities and all you stand to lose.

Living the good life because it's where you keep your heart. No matter what comes, it's keeping that sanctuary alive. It's the very thing you keep it alive for. It begins and ends all your dreams. But all the while you know, you can't possibly put all of your energy in one single place like that. The What If looms...

And we live and we learn. And we sleep and we wake and we remember. It takes just a moment. Just a glance, but we do remember. The Why. And in the end, The Why is what makes the What If so crippling.

It's like a dangerous, delicate dance. It terrifies you if you give it much thought, because it's the kind of thing you wouldn't throw away over an argument of pride. It's the kind of thing you realize you have no pride in the face of. How do you protect yourself against that?

In short, you can't. You can only love. Truly love and trust that they won't forget you. That they won't outgrow you. That they won't go where you cannot follow. Taking your heart with them.

It's not what you expect. How could you? It's like watching your life in IMAX, tinted in love, filled with hope and echoing in your own ears. Shinning with a light too bright to stare at directly.

And in the end we do what we always do. We begin to see our miracles as part of our everyday. Flowing from week to week, year to year. Rarely slowing down long enough to see then for what they really are.

But sometimes, we see them. It takes just a moment. Just a glance and then we remember.

That's when we start pining.