Post wedding thoughts*

The sun is streaming through the window, and my wife is stretching in the living room. The sun and her meet in a patch of warm light on the floor that overlaps with her yoga mat. I hear her breathe slowly as the tight muscles protest her exercise. This only serves to remind her that it has been far too long since she last danced. Wedding planning is not easy on someone who depends on hours of training to keep her body fit. I watch the play of light and shadows as her arms and legs move this way and that, amazed that I am married to such a beautiful creature.

Not even a month into marriage. I am still getting used to it. There is something epic and heroic about getting married. The romance of it all seems as antiquated as society would have us believe, but that only makes me love my lifelong vows even more. Screw society, what the hell does it know about love anyway? Most of the time it seems like Hollywood must be run by a couple of old horny men who have never known love. It is all so much more complicated, difficult, and beautiful than a couple of grunting bipeds in the throws of passion. True love is... who knows? But I've rarely seen it up on the big screen. I've seen it in my life though: catching her watching me as I go through my daily tasks, the way she rolls into me first thing in the morning before she even opens her eyes, a table set, an embrace after she has spent all day working, giving up dancing for me to finish school... pieces of the love puzzle that I decided that I couldn't live without when I gave her that ring.

Sure, it's all rainbows and butterflies when you first get hitched, you say. Well, so what if it is? Is that any less of a reason to enjoy it? Perhaps in 10 years I will no longer find fascination at her contortions on the living room carpet. But perhaps I will move past that, and 40 years from now I will miss them, once we are too old and stiff to stretch. And we will live in awe that we were lucky enough to enjoy each other like we did. They say love is like a fine wine or whisky, and that it ripens and gets better with age. Richer, more complex flavors, hints of oak and elderberries as we amble up the stairs and gripe about the weather and deal with incontinence.

I can't help but think that Christians and Jews are onto something when they compare love, sex, and ultimately marriage to the spiritual union of God and his creation. There is something cosmic about it all. I watch my wife and I can almost see her molecules mixing with the photons in the sunbeam and dissolving into the air that connects us both.

Yet, in the end, love is a decision more than an experience. It is the ultimate act of cosmic creation that we feed and decide to keep alive. We are responsible for pushing through the good and bad times. We keep love alive, not the other way around. All we may need is love, but love needs us just as much, if not more.

My wife has left the room. She is done stretching, just as I am almost done writing. Perhaps this has been nothing more than the platitudes of a newlywed, but I can't help but feel as I do. I can hear her in the shower now, humming and warming up those sore muscles with the tentacles of showerwater that run from the shower head to the drain. I feel very blessed. Very much indeed. The patch of sunlight is still on the floor behind me. Now that she is no longer in it, I feel like I should take it up, like a large cat, and solar charge myself for the day. A book, a patch of sunlight, and time. What more can I ask for? Perhaps in a little while, my wife will sneak up behind me and plant a kiss on the back of my neck. That would make the picture complete, I guess.

*this is an edit of a freewrite that was fairly well received by one of my classes