The Makings of Love

Ol' Spouse-the-Storyteller put the kids to bed with a romance story the other night.  It was all about us falling in love...kind of.

He told them about how I visited him in Missouri one summer when he was working as one of those post-missionary salesmen.   We would sometimes take walks around a duck pond at his apartment complex and talk about whether we were or we were not going to break up again.  He confessed that after not too long I realized that he was very careful to place me between him and the ducks.

There is a reason for this.  You see, Spouse-the-Scarred had some pretty rough run-ins with a chicken when he was three.  His older sister got to bring home the mean, mean, mean class chicken for forever and for always.  He said that chicken would chase the whole family just hoping to peck someone.  And since he was the youngest of the bunch with nothing more than three-year-old toddle power...well, George the chicken was able to create a lasting scar on his psyche.  Sadly, I don't think Spouse-the-Avoider-of-Aviaries will ever really feel at peace with fowl in this life.

But I didn't fend off the ducks just when we went walking, I also kept them at bay when we went on runs in the morning along one of those circa 1980 exercise-station trails.  Spouse-the-Master-of-the-Push-Up-But-Not-So-Much-the-Pull-up told the kids about how one morning  when we were buzzing along the trail, he needed a little extra oomph when we stopped at some pull-up bars along our way.  The pull-up bars were low and he's a pretty doggone big boy, so in order to give him a helpful little lift I had to get down on the ground.  We figured it would be best if I just crouched down and put my hands under his feet and pushed up when he pulled up.

By the time the older gentleman with the little dog came walking our direction, Spouse-the-Determined had done quite a few pull-ups with the short-girlfriend assist and his arms were smoked.  So the exercise had kind of changed more into a push-200-pounds upward exercise for me and a hang-on-and-survive for him.  We can only imagine what the older gentleman thought of the little girl straining to lift the big muscular boy to the top of the pull-up bar at 6am in the morning.

It is an unlikely romance story, this tale that Spouse-the-Captain-of-Bedtime told the kids.  But really Spouse-the-Once-My-Boyfriend had me even more love dizzy with this kind of stuff because he laughed about it.  There was no prideful, machismo cover-up.  We laughed hard about it.  In the moment it happened we giggled and guffawed.  And if you ask me, that is the makings of love.