we danced on the table, because love

So on this day in 2007, a petite, ceaselessly silly, impossibly dear woman, who regards the worst puns as the best humor; who claims scatological rhymes as high poetry; who mocks the singer-songwriter greats of the 1960s-’70s as whiny and verbose; who thinks beer should be fizzy and yellow and, honestly, flavor-optional; who believes “coffee” should contain no actual coffee; who gets caught up in reality TV and would play Cookie Jam or Panda Pop or Make Frank’s Head Explode on her phone in another room if John Cleese or Jon Stewart suddenly appeared on the set to do that voodoo that they do; who finds the very mention of politics reason enough to exit any conversation; who regards a meal without meat as a snack; who goes to bed early, and gets up the same; who can barely sit still long enough to watch an actual movie, and would be back again to Cookie Panda Frank-Go-Boom! Jam Pop territory if the flick dared to be a Casablanca, or, holy hell, a Withnail & I or a Bladerunner; who, in short, could not be any less like me on the surface than had I tried to summon my very opposite from the ether, but whose singular compassionate silly-ass heart is a prize I will never not wonder how I somehow won, got on a Grand Cayman-bound boat with me, departing a towering cruise ship on a seemingly innocent day-trip, fully unaware at that time that she was going to be getting married within a few hours – and to me, no less! As in I had never asked her, never even said boo on the subject. And was pretty soon about to, me and my stomach packed with butterflies and head full of what-ifs.

By late morning, on the pretense of a tour, we were inside a cozy historic church with a ceiling crafted from an old ship’s body, in the presence of a goodly native-islander minister whom Lisa believed to be our tour guide, with his mellifluous British-Caribbean voice and willingness to chance that this hefty American loon about to ask this small woman if she would be his wife might just be told no (“He’s kidding, right?” she said to the minister upon my popping The Question; “No, ma’am,” this unrelentingly charming gent responded, in on the plan for several weeks by then. “He’s very serious.”), having no advance warning that she was about to be asked, right there, at the proverbial hitching-post itself. I had a lovely Celtic-knot diamond ring in my pocket, picked out by our daughter, Taylor, and a backpack full of rumpled dressier clothes that we could wear to seem a little more ceremonious, assuming yes, and an assortment of “old, new, borrowed and blue” items sent along by friends and family, all of whom were in on my matrimonial aspirations, even if my intended had nary the faintest notion yet of my intentions.

Clearly, she ultimately said yes. And that afternoon, we drank to what we were now, two as one, round two for each of us, holy shit, now what? And that night, back on the big boat, to celebrate, we danced like happy fools on our own dinner table, amid our cheering cruise-ship amigos, the newly Mr. and Mrs. We.

She said yes, yes. And without her, let me say that my life would be so very many times no. She grounds me, and also lifts me from my interminable, terrible grays, the ones that don’t go away by just wishing pretty. She makes me roll my eyes in pun-brought pain (to be fair, so does my old pal Joseph Rayle, that bastard; together, they are a terrible pun-ishment, indeed). She champions me when I can find nothing but lousy in myself. She mishears – I suspect, intentionally – lyrics to prized songs by Dylan, Zevon, del Amitri, the Weakerthans (“I hate Gwenapeth”? Really? It’s “Winnipeg,” dammit! They’re Canadian!), et al., and then always sings the wrong ones going forward. She lovingly feeds, out of her hands, my heartstrings-bound old blind kitty, among my best and dearest friends. She gave me the chance to be a father to two phenomenal kids, and one perfect diamond of an insanely beautiful granddaughter. She tells me to fuck off when I need it.She loves me, as silly as that proposition is.

And by now, she is groaning at the length of this, as probably are you. What can I say? Loving me – hell, really even tolerating me – can be mighty tricky, yo.

So, happy anniversary … to me! And, I hope, to my dearest Lisa. I truly can’t imagine why she stays with me. But I hope, like life itself, that she always will.

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