Always
Love isn't one thing. It's two people, moving the same direction without being asked.
Behind the Story
I wrote this for National Spouse Day a few years ago. It is June now, but it still fits at the turn of the summer. It is really about a question I keep returning to. What does partnership look like when nobody is watching, and nothing is easy?
So I imagined forward. I pictured a version of us with a child, because that scene strips love down to its working parts. The diaper. The stroller heavy with food. The cry at midnight.
None of it is glamorous. All of it is real.
I wanted to see who we would be in those moments, and I already know the answer because I see it now, in smaller ways. One of us reaches before the other asks. The work splits itself, clean and wordless, like water finding its level.
I kept counting to two on purpose. Two hands. Two legs. Two hearts. I never wanted us to dissolve into one person. We stay distinct. We just keep choosing the same direction until the choosing becomes a rhythm.
“Always” is the smallest word I had and the heaviest. It is part promise, part observation. By the last line, it stops being a vow and becomes a description. It is simply what partnership is, or what I believe it can be.
This is my way of acknowledging her. Not with a grand gesture but with the quiet certainty that whatever we carry, we carry it the same way. Together.
✦
A Question for You
I would love to hear about the small ways your person shows up for you in your life.