When I get to heaven, I will love everyone as much as I currently love my husband, Jon. That thought just explodes my head.
This morning I spent twenty minutes, with all the hustle of three tiny kids, patiently tearing out the poems in each of the 30 New Yorker Magazines I was about to recycle. I knew that Jon enjoyed a few of these original poems and would be sad to lose them. I had no idea which 3 to 4 of the 80 poems he'd want to save. I doubted if Jon could remember enough of the opening lines to tell me which ones to save if I called him at work. So, I patiently flipped to the contents page of each issue, located the two poems inside, carefully tore out the pages, tossed the remaining magazine in the "to be recycled" pile, and placed the poems in the "to be filed" pile. I repeated this procedure thirty times, while Maria begged for more food, Hannah wanted to jump on me instead of just my bed, and Alex refused to stay on the potty.
When I told Jon that the New Yorker poems where now filed under his name at dinner, he was totally shocked. "You did all that for me?" "Well, of course" I answered.
Well, of course. He loves poetry. The poems are the first thing he flips to each time the New Yorker comes into the house. He asks me questions about them hours later when we are driving to random events. How could I not take care of these poems for him?
Jon also has this dangerous big toenail from a botched ingrown toenail operation that he had as a kid. I affectionately call it "the claw." In the middle of the night, when my husband kicks out the tangled comforter from the foot of the bed, he'll occasionally hit my leg. "What is that sharp, knife like thing glazing my ankle?" I'll awake from sleep with a start. 'Oh, it's just the claw" I think, and snuggle closer to him. A scrape down my leg now means that I'm in bed with the right man. Hard to believe that I'll one day accept all bruises this kindly and see similar beauty in other people's scary toenails.
