A Real Life Benjamin Button

The other night, after a few weeks of getting back to our life after Megan and the children left, I suddenly realized there were parallels in our life to the Benjamin Button movie.

Over the past year, and even more so during the holidays (when I wasn't sick) Larry and I have been doing some partying (in a modest and responsible way) by going out to dinner, going to the movies, opening bottles of wine, inviting people over, going over to friends houses, celebrating, laughing, snuggling and purring............like teenagers discovering the adult world.

I spent some time thinking about it, and realized that when we met 14 years ago, I was in the throes of single parenting, which all went rapidly sour after meeting Larry. (nothing to do with him...just circumstance) He should have left after meeting the kids for the first time, and getting kicked in the shins by a nine year old while he was helping me move furniture.

During the teen years, I don't know how he hung in there --- I don't know how I hung in there. They weren't even his kids. He had to deal with the ex-husband, the ex-fiance, and the most I ever heard out of his mouth was him mumbling something about "shoe shit" (which has become one of my favorite terms for people you can't get out of your life!).

He suffered through the trips to the hospitals, the rehabs, nights of hysteria on their and on my end, hours of counseling, blips in our relationship where I almost left or wanted him to leave.

He still married me, we had to wait a year or two to take a real honeymoon, and just when we thought we were going to have a life together, my kids joined the military, my daughter was shipped to Iraq, to later come home pregnant, and develop a slew of medical problems. (which are not over) She was diagnosed with cancer with two year old who called the hospital "mommy's home". Again, I was a mess, and not much fun.

The universe has given us some respite...the past year where we have had some time where we have actually started to "date". Dinners together out or in front of the fire. Adventures in the convertible, acting like we don't have a care in the world. Getting silly sipping glugg or some crazy concoction that we invent. Doing the things that we never got to do as a young couple sans children.

I know that more is to come down the pike. Such is life. But I am going to live life like a child who is wide eyed with discovery and the excitement of learning about love, almost as if it were for the first time - from the Sound of Music:
"Perhaps I had a wicked childhood
Perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past
There must have been a moment of truth
For here you are
Standing there
Loving me
Whether or not you should
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

Patti O Sentimentality
(tonight take out Sushi, in front of the fire, with Shiva joining in. He loves edamame!)