My Valentine

February always finds me, like Bilbo Baggins said in The Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien), "...thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread." I definitely don't feel skinny, but in the hovering winter before  spring in the Deep South, I feel I'm in that dream where I am desperately trying to run, but my legs seem to be slogging through mud. There's a beast or ghoul catching up to me, but nothing will make me able to go faster. Eventually, I start flapping my "wings" and slowly, slowly make my way into the sky, right before I'm gobbled up. Yep. Winter in Georgia is a bad dream, with snatches of false spring interspersed with cold, bleary, wet days. My neighbor from Anchorage says that it's colder here than Alaska, because of the humid misery of it. Thank God it's short, but I must really learn to be grateful. Things could be much, much worse.

We just celebrated our 43rd anniversary, which is a bright spot in the winter morass. It was really a month of fun and uncommon blessings, if I'm to be truthful. Our son, Jonathan and I surprised Ken with a new-to-him Big Truck. It has extra muscles, good for hauling campers and pulling down houses. People might think it strange, how we do it around here. Jon and I find vehicles and show up with them, when there's cash to do such things. Then we sell the old ones at good prices, because Ken takes such fantastic care of them. He trusts Jon's judgment and prefers the shock and awe of it. I've seen neither hide or hair of him for two weeks while he's detailing and tricking out his new baby.

For my Christmas, anniversary and birthday gifts for possibly the rest of my earthly life, Ken's gift to me this year was a kitten. Little Miss Jillian Pixiebob made her entrance this week, after a harrowing $56 roundtrip dash to Orlando to pick her up. Word to the wise: do not bring kittens on planes. No one is happy and you might get murdered.  

Love isn't like a Hallmark movie, where the end is a kiss and promise. That's just the beginning. Love is a man who hates cats but gives his life over to a kitten just to make his wife smile. He tolerates my animals, helps me out of chairs and trucks, tucks me in at night, puts my special pillow under my back, lets me have all the babies I wanted (and we tried for even more), puts on his boots every day and works his whole life, loves his grandkids like there's no tomorrow, is happy to watch all my "stuff," never complains about the squeaks and squawks from my flute practice, encourages me when I want to take yet another class, sees that we go to church, tithes even when it hurts, straightens up my messes, cleans and shines my nasty car, takes me to the symphony (when he'd rather do a Netflix binge), brings me soup when I'm sick, and especially, loves me when I'm unloveable, which is often. The scriptures say that a man's job is to love his wife as Christ loves the church. The world and even the church seem to have a hard time staying faithful or married. I think I'll keep this one.