'Bout a Boy and a Girl

"I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner.

I think happy girls are the prettiest girls,

and I believe in kissing, kissing a lot."

--Audrey Hepburn

Scott captured my heart from an early age. We were a meeting of minds and spirits, with the same laid-back approach to life. Ours was a courtship of play. We met when we were eleven--climbed trees and played kick-the-can in the yard.

All during high-school, Scott and I maintained a platonic relationship, writing each other and hanging out occasionally. The spring Scott turned seventeen, it softly turned into something more. We never really spoke about the transformation of our affections into love, but with that first hesitant joining of hands, it was a change mutually acknowledged and understood.

Scott and I were great friends long before we loved. Anger is uncommon between us.

I've always felt the day we quit playing together would be the day our relationship would begin to unravel.

Scott and I had been dating three years when my brother died, and the weight of that tragedy should have destroyed us. I knew when Scott asked me to marry him that the fabric of our relationship would always bear this flaw, yet we loved and were in love.

Even if I hadn’t already loved him, Scott would have been hard to walk away from; his commitment to our relationship through the gravity of my brother's death spoke volumes about his character. His loyalty was not some of who he was; it was all of who he was.

We are fire on kindling, he and I.

And though my heart has released its tight hold on Nathaniel’s memory, I face the daily choice of loving my husband, my children, my parents and friends, with the same intensity and devotion.

Love is, after all, the gift of one’s self.

My heart is very aware of the pain risked by offering myself

with abandon should another I love ever float away from me.

Ana Laura sings, “The secret of life is letting go. The secret of love is letting it show.”

I wish I could say letting go came effortlessly for me, but the stark reality is that the

balance of holding my husband and children with an open palm and loving them with crazy abandon remains my greatest battlefield—a fight that involves a single-minded purpose when my will and emotions clash on the front line.

As a defense mechanism, I want to retreat—to protect my heart from the shock of loss—

but it's not an option, not really.

Some may say I give myself too freely, but I chose to love,

in spite of the risk of losing and missing; because it's in the rash acts of loving—

of selflessly pouring myself out—that made me real, alive.

So, I cherish every moment with Scott, knowing tomorrow is never guaranteed, that every day is gold.

Happy Heart Day, mah dears!