Tonight as I was serving myself the dinner that splitcat had made I found myself in a flash back to the early years of our marriage. I commented on this to splitcat and he said he had the same thought as he was cooking. It was a simple meal of stir fried chicken, rice, green beans, and cucumbers soaked in italian dressing. This was the staple meal of our home when we were first married. With both of us working full-time the simpler the meal the better. The only difference in tonight's meal was that the beans and cucumber came from our garden rather than the grocery store. And we ate at a dining table rather than an old card table shoved precariously between our bookshelves and another card table with our computer on it. Our first apartment was a simple one bedroom arrangement. Its best feature a large kitchen. We were lucky that it was also on the ground floor. Except the nights our neighbors upstairs had screaming fights and then made up. As I sat down to eat tonight I wondered if we were still the same people that inhabited that place. I think that when we are alone together, we are.

We have always been an old married couple. When we go out for breakfast, we sit and read the newspaper, occasionally commenting on an article of interest. We still can't figure out what to do when we have a night off and usually end up at home going our separate ways, usually splitcat at the computer and me with my nose in a book. But it is done in companionable silence. There is not always a need for us to talk. We have no need to go to trendy restaurants or trendy places. We spent our honeymoon in that first apartment, sightseeing around Atlanta. It was home. And we could think of no better place to begin our lives together. A month or so after our wedding we did go on a trip up to the mountains courtesy of splitcat's parents.

But over the years we have found that we are much happier in a tent than a hotel room and that staying home is much more relaxing than a vacation. That silence speaks more deeply than chatter. In the past few weeks and months splitcat has more than proven himself as both a husband and a father. Taking care of me and the kids. I don't know if he truly understands how grateful I am of his uncomplaining and generous help. So I'll leave you with the poem I had printed in our wedding program.

Sonnet XXVI

I lived with visions for my company
Instead of men and women, years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me.
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world's dust, their lutes did silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst come--to be,
Belovèd, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
Their songs, their splendours (better, yet the same,
As river-water hallowed into fonts),
Met in thee, and from out thee overcame
My soul with satisfaction of all wants
Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning