June in the Chattahoochee Valley. Time for fresh tomatoes, peaches, blackeye peas and sweet tea. It is also the season for company picnics, if anyone is still doing those. Every year about this time, I get nostalgic about a particular company picnic and what, short of someone dying, turned out to be the saddest day of my life. [Read more…]
Big Love
I’m going to start 2011 making sure that I pay proper tribute to my spectacular wife. 2010 would have been unbearable for me without Jill Tigner. She is simply indescribable, but I’ll try: Astute business person, warrior mother, gentle caregiver, diligent friend, deeply-loving spouse, stunning without makeup, sharp witted, funny as hell, patient and loyal.
This open love letter to Jill is the way I’ve chosen to begin my year in the blogosphere. Of all the things I know, my love for her is thing that I’m the most sure of. If this sappy post causes any rolling eyes or groans from my male readers, I am sorry for you. I am sorry that you don’t have what I have. I’ve told people on numerous occasions that we have a big love. This love is the spot that generates the most pain when I get worried about the return of my cancer and I get rocked back on my heels with concerns about my survival. I can’t bear the thought of leaving her. She is just that precious to me.
The song that you may be listening to right now comes very close to capturing how I feel about my wife, my lover, my friend. Bearing these very personal feelings is as close as I can get to standing naked on the roof of the Aflac building. Trust me, I knew no one would be able to take that spectacle. As I begin this new year, cautiously optimistic about my health, at least I begin by holding the hand of a very special woman to walk with me. I know she is committed to taking every step with me, no matter how rocky the road gets. It is a good feeling.
This song has such special meaning to me. I love you, Jill.
Here are the lyrics:
Are those your eyes?
Is that your smile?
I’ve been looking at your forever, yet I never saw you before.
Are those your hands holding mine?
Now I wonder how I could’ve been so blind.
For the first time I am looking in your eyes, I’m seeing who you are.
I can’t believe how much I see when you’re looking back at me.
Now I understand what love is for the first time.
Can this be real?
Can this be true?
Am I the person I was this morning?
And are you the same you?
It’s all so strange.
How can it be?
All along this love was right in front of me.
Such a long time ago I had given up on finding this emotion ever again.
But you’re right here with me now. Yes, I’ve found you somehow.
And I’ve never been so sure.
And for the first time I am looking in your eyes.
For the first time I’m seeing who you are.
I can’t believe how much I see when you’re looking back at me.
Now I understand what love is for the first time.
Sally Said “Yes!”
I got the call on Christmas morning that I’d been hoping I’d get this Christmas. My nephew Andrew Myers has asked Sally McGuire for her hand in marriage and she accepted! Why, you might ask, is the such great news for me? Because I fell in love with that girl the moment I met her and I’m am giddy about the news that she is going to be joining our family.
Jill had met her a few weeks before I got to meet her. She came home and reported that Sally was a sweet girl and that she had a great personality. Andrew is Melanie and Marshall’s next to oldest of five sons. Their oldest, our nephew Jeremy, is married to Meredith. She set an impossibly high mark for women who would be prospective wives of our total of nine sons. Seeing these great young men fall in love with incredible women and creating loving unions just makes me happy.
Sally, welcome to our crazy family. We’re all just a little nutty, but we love hard, and from my very first impression of you, you’ll be an awesome addition to the group. I have two requests: You’ve got to teach me how to fly fish and you’ve got to drive me home from the Asheville drum circle. I definitely shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car, because on that Friday night, I’m going to burn the house down!
Sally, I have a big Love. Jill and I have one of the greatest marriages I know of. I love her more than anything and I respect her even more than I love her.
Marriage is not a 50/50 deal. It is a 100/100 proposition. You have to give it all you have every single day and if your partner is doing the same thing, everything will always work out.
I wish for you and Andrew to have one of these special marriages, one for the ages. I will dance at your wedding and I will toast that you both have long, happy lives and many blonde children.
I am so happy for you both, because you are both special, wonderful people. Happy New Year, Sally! I’m so happy that you’ll be joining our family!
Thank You For This Day
Sitting in the afterglow of a beautiful day. Headphones on listening to Evening Kitchen by Band of Horses. I can hear our sons Michael and Adam singing this like they did at our last family trip to Splendor Mountain. I’m scanning friends’ photos on facebook with the music in my ears. Families smiling, football games, glasses of wine, empty places in honor of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines lost in battle or lost to the holidays while deployed, prayers, plates of food, family pets and people napping. Vignettes of other people’s lives. Snippets in others’ time.
Our Thanksgiving prayer today was a circle of 22 people holding hands in our great room, a little churchy for this Episcopalian, but I was just feeling it today. I usually fret over my prayer, but today I just busted it out, sort of in Rick McKnight style. Don’t know if it is what I’m going through with my health or if I just got a drift from my muse or the first ever gathering of all four of our sons for our Thanksgiving meal. This day was good. Thank you God for this day.
Flipping the Bird
Thanksgiving Day may be the best day of the year. The holiday, devoid of most of the typical American materialistic money mongering, is just about family, food and thankfulness. What could be better? This year, because of what is going on with my health, will be bittersweet. In a typical year, I’d be outside days in advance of Thanksgiving trying to get things in shape after the beginnings of the annual leaf fall had our yard looking like New York City’s Broadway after a ticker tape parade. [Read more…]